Some of us approach Christmas day with anxiety. Maybe you’re overwhelmed with how much work you have to do before the holiday break happens—you have too many deadlines and you don’t know how you’re going to do it all. You might have what feels like endless shopping lists, for presents and groceries and you don’t know how you’ll have enough time to make Christmas happen again this year. For single moms and parents, this time of year can become a greater burden. Or, you’re anxious because this time of year brings back painful experiences and memories of loved ones who won’t be home for Christmas. I’ll have a Blue, blue, Christmas this year.
If any of that describes you, if you’re anxious today, Advent is a time to find hope in the middle of your anxiety. Advent is a time to refuse to let anxiety have its way with us. Advent is a time that refuses to let our fears and pains keep us from embracing the light and warmth of Christmas again.
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he calls them to something that if you’re like me, well, it sounds impossible. He says in Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”
Easy for you to say Paul. You’re a super Christian. I’m just an ordinary person. I don’t know how to rejoice. I can’t have joy when I’m dealing with this—you haven’t been there—or I can’t have joy when I’m feeling like I do—you don’t know what it’s like to be me.
As much as I want to write Paul off right now as some pie in the sky theologian, or some overly pious Christian, or somebody who is singing about a red-nosed reindeer or frosty the snowman while there are real problems going on this Christmas season—his life and his circumstances won’t allow me to do that. I—we—can’t write him off.
Paul wrote these words while he was in prison, while he was being prosecuted. He and Silas went to the city of Philippi to preach the gospel as missionaries…And while there they were unjustly stripped naked and beaten with rods by a mob. Then the government officials threw them into jail. But while they were inside of the walls of captivity, he and Silas joyfully sang hymns to God. They joyfully prayed to God, and they did it without fear or shame, and with conviction in their hearts such that the jailor, the person who was guarding the prison doors, ended up asking them “What must I do to be saved?”
So Paul speaks as someone who knew how to rejoice no matter what was going on around him or happening to him. Do you want to know how to have that kind of joy today? I do, and I confess that I have not always been a joy-filled person. It’s not easy, but if we listen long enough to Paul’s instruction, we may learn how the gospel can free us from anxiety so we can rejoice always. How the gospel can deliver us from the vice-grip anxiety might have over us, and turn us into people who are full of joy instead of full of anxiety.
How Can We Rejoice?
“Rejoice always, again I will say, rejoice.” What an impossible command for us to hear. It sounds like that song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy.” But wait, the text doesn’t say Rejoice always, again I will say, rejoice, does it? We’re not to clap our hands just because or smile away for no apparent reason. How does v. 4 read?…Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
What would seem like an impossible command—have joy, or rejoice constantly—is met with the God who makes the impossible, possible. The reason we are commanded to rejoice always is because the Lord himself is the object of our rejoicing. Jesus is the reason, not for the season, but for our rejoicing. He is the very source, the secure ground—On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.
It’s almost the end of the year which means lists are coming out about how to have more joy in 2020, or how to be happier this new year. And what do people tend to be happy in? (List some things off….) Go outdoors, do self-care, play with your kids, play like a kid, travel more, exercise, sleep more, the list goes on. So if we take any of those things on that list, I’ll take travel for example. Rejoice in traveling more, again I will say rejoice. What’s wrong with believing travel is going to be a reliable source of constant joy? ….well what if i can no longer travel anymore. What if my finances plummet. What if I get too old to move and explore far. What if I have obligations (work or family) that keep me from soaring the heights that I want to, and now I resent family and work because travel was supposed to fix my empty feeling of not being happy.
See, we could take any number of those things in that list, and substitute one for the other, BUT UNTIL we replace any and all of those things on that list with the LORD and CREATOR of all those things, we will never be able to rejoice always. But IF, if we find joy in the Lord, nothing—not anyone—not anything—can take joy from us. Never. Not ever.
And that’s because our joy is centered in the Lord. It’s an oxymoron to meet a joyless Christian, because a Christian is someone who is united to Jesus, the Lord and source of all joy, hope, comfort, love, and peace.
Now of course, it’s possible for a Christian to have days or seasons where we lack joy. Maybe we don’t or haven’t thought much about how the good news changes our outlook on pretty much everything. Maybe we forgot what it’s like, maybe we’ve been isolated for so long we have grown cold and indifferent. Maybe we haven’t been participating in the life of the church and we have fewer reasons to even remember what difference the gospel makes at all. Maybe we’ve been caught up in a particular sin that is suffocating our joy—and we need to repent right now and ask God for forgiveness. Or maybe we are clinically depressed or suffering from anxiety, and it is very difficult to experience a decent day, let alone a joyful one. But, if a person does not have joy, ever, and has never had a sense of joy—the question I have to ask myself, and you should be asking yourself is—Am I really a Christian? Do I today—now—trust in Jesus? This command is a present command—rejoice always. That means right now. Are you full of joy?
Jesus is the reason we can rejoice always.
How to Deal With Your Anxiety
And a very practical way in which all of this applies is in our daily life. In Philippians 4:6, Paul brings up something that many of us face right now, or probably dealt with regularly.
That something is anxiety.
The word “anxiety” means that we are full of care. Maybe a good way to put it is, it’s the experience of caring too much. It’s that gnawing, clawing feeling you get that disrupts our peace of mind, destroys our joy, and disturbs our lives in ways that make us feel heavy, feel burdened, feel stuck.
But I want to say three quick things about anxiety before going any further.
1. Anxiety is a normal reaction that can happen to anybody.
We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t get anxious in response to something unsettling that happens in our lives. To get anxious about someone or something reveals that we care a lot about the person, or fixing a situation, or resolving an issue.
2. If you suffer from anxiety, please in no way take what I’m about to say as not being in favor of taking medication or seeking out a holistic treatment plan to help you with battling anxiety.
What I want to focus on now is the root and heart issue surrounding anxiety, not the biochemical or other areas that affect us simply because we have bodies that, because of the fall, don’t work properly all the time. Sometimes our bodies need multiple helps and tools to deal with our anxiety or depression.
3. Anxiety is not something that can easily or quickly BE fixed.
The worst possible advice you can give to someone who suffers from anxiety is to tell them to “stop worrying.” That’s not going to help anyone. A person can’t stop being anxious any more than a football player who just got hit hard and now has a leg injury can just get up and “walk it off.” Usually they’re wheeled off the field because the problem is so serious it’s out of their own hands.
The thing about anxiety is, we don’t choose to be anxious. Anxiety comes upon us. It could be because of good reasons, like a death in the family, job loss, difficult circumstances. But it could also be because of no clear reason. I might have no reason at all to be anxious, I know I have nothing to worry about right now, but I feel so overwhelmed. I wake up in the middle of the night and my chest is pounding. I’m struck down. Out of nowhere, like the football player I’ve been laid out by this thing and I’m not able to get up and walk. Anxiety isn’t always a choice. Whether circumstances shape it, or feelings do, sometimes it just happens.
So we might not be able to control moments or seasons of feeling anxious, but what we can begin to do is see how the gospel can free us from our anxiety. Now hear me out. I am not telling you to “Stop worrying!” about your anxiety. I am not saying, “Just quit being anxious.” I’m not even saying “Just trust God.” or condemning you by saying “You’re just not trusting God enough, that’s why you suffer from this condition.” That’s not Paul’s message. Those are the cliches we say when we don’t know what to say to a friend who is anxious.
But, look at how Paul phrases it in Philippians 4:6, "do not be anxious about anything…”
Oh, here we go again… See, he’s saying just stop being anxious…wait, no he’s not… He goes on, “but.” See, it’s not a simple “stop worrying”—that part is true, that does need to stop, but something else must start in place of the stopping.
There is hope for the anxious person. What’s the answer Paul gives us?
He says, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Paul’s teaching reflects the very words of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus taught in Matthew 6, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” The Lord who is near in his Second Advent—coming soon and forever close to us—is the one who is in control of everything.
What low-grade anxiety does to us is it creates a distraction in our lives. Tim Keller once labeled our culture as having “attention deficit disorder.” Or like media ecologists have said, we live in a time where we are “distracting ourselves to death.” But this internal distractedness that many of us experience is the enemy of peace. This lack of focus, this lack of direction to what really matters takes us deeper into ourselves. But Paul calls us to look not within ourselves, not to trust in ourselves, but to trust in and look to God.
The best way to become anxious about nothing is to pray about everything. The best way to stop worrying about anything is to start praying about everything!
Prayer is a conversation with God. It’s us talking to God, responding from his Word. Proseuchomai is the Greek word where we get pray from, but the pros prefix gives it a directed sense. It literally means to “pray toward.” The act of prayer itself propels us to look up to God, not down to ourselves. To look out, not within. And in the presence of God, that’s where our fears and anxieties can begin to dissipate.
Now this doesn’t mean prayer is going to cure all worry. It’s not a magic trick. But it does mean that we will fare far better in this life for having gone to God with every concern and fear and worry than we would without taking it to the Lord in prayer. It does mean that, in God’s own timing, he may help us and have us overcome our worst nightmares or daily battles. Anxiety doesn’t go away because the Philippians—or we—have nothing to stress out about or problems or concerns, but because the Lord is with us.
The Lord is on our side and he is fighting our battles. God is greater than our greatest problem, concern, fear, worry, and anxiety. And prayer is the means that God has given us and that he actively uses to accomplish that lifting of worry and freeing us from the grip of anxiety.
You might not feel this way right now, but let me encourage you to start thinking about the anxiety you deal with as a blessing. Think of it as a precious little gift from God if you have to fight against anxiety. Because each time you engage in that battle, you get the chance to cast your cares and concerns on the Lord, because he cares for you.
The fact that you have anxiety is another opportunity to go running back to God with it. It’s an invitation from the Lord to come closer to him. Prayer can be the way anxiety that is nagging and annoying, and even terrible if in high doses, can become a means of grace in your life. A means by which you are drawn closer and closer into the arms of the Lord who cares for the brokenhearted and the anxious. Even if you remian anxious—especially if you are anxious—the Lord is near.
A Prayer for the Anxious During Advent
Father, give us lives that live and breath and move in constant conversation with you. Prayer is the antidote to anxiety. Prayer is Your prescription for a life that lacks trust. Prayer is medicine and balm for a worrisome life.
Help us to trust and rest confidently each day in you. Let us find peace and all security in you, and in you alone. And help us to see that your drawing near to us means all our fears and worries have an expiration date.
That because of Advent, one day soon you are going to do away with all fears and tears, and replace all that with peace, love, and the fullness of joy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
