Well, good morning friends and thank you for spending your holiday weekend with us here at Mission Grove. Yes, I am John's dad in case you don't know me, I'm Jim Craig. And it's just a privilege that John would ask me to help uh this Sunday, John and Sam and the kiddos are on a well earned vacation and they're having a great time. They, I talked to him yesterday and he wanted to make sure I sent along uh that he's praying for us and his blessings are with us this morning and he wanted me to say thank you. And uh I said I certainly would do that. Um I too am very thankful for many, many, many of you that have helped us get into this facility. Isn't this just fantastic to be here in this place? I just, I don't know. I just a prayer of thanks keeps going up and yet I still worry about tomorrow. It's the strangest thing. It's like Lord, yesterday was awesome. Thank you so much. You're so powerful and gracious. And, but what are we going to do about this coming up? This is a real problem, Lord. What are we going to do? I don't know if you struggle with war. I come from a family of warriors. Uh I'd like to say I come from a family of warriors, but really it was a family of warriors. Uh My grandfather, a big strong German worker wanted to instill in my dad the fear of God and he ended up putting the fear of everything basically into my dad while he was trying to do that. So I battle with this as much as, as anybody. Um parents tend to worry about their kids a lot. I don't know if you've ever worried about your child. But here's a letter from a camper. His parents sent him away to summer camp. See if you would enjoy getting this as a mom or dad. He said, dear mom and dad, Scout master, John said we should write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried, we're ok. Most of our tents got washed away with all the sleeping bags in them. But that's ok because we spent most of the night looking for Chad who got lost up in the mountains. Tell his parents he's ok. But he can't write a letter for a while since he now has two broken arms. Scout master John said it was lucky we had all that lightning going on around us. So we may never have found him in the ravine that he fell in. Scout Master John said he was pretty mad at Chad and he didn't tell him he was going for a hike. And Chad said I did tell him but it was during the kitchen fire in the mess hall that Scout Master John seemed a little distracted at the time. Don't worry, mom, the fire is out and Scout Master John says he has special soap. We can all use to get the soot and smell out of our hair and clothes. We asked him if we should still eat the meat that got blackened in the fire and he said that's probably ok. So we scraped it off and ate it. I hope it's not a problem since all the port of Johns were also washed away in the flood lol. Ok. The flood wiped out the main roads. It looks like they're going to have to send helicopters to lift us out at the end of the week. That sounds pretty cool. Right. I've never been airlifted into a helicopter before. I hope it gets here soon because the rain has unleashed a massive amount of mosquitoes and they don't seem to be too happy to be here either. Sure wish we had our tents back, sleeping on the wet ground. Isn't that much fun at all. Scoutmaster John told us not to worry. He's been through all this before, although never quite this bad. Oh, got to go. Now someone just spotted a big black bear heading towards our camp love. So, I don't know. Would that scare you at all? Probably not. Ok. Well, listen, medical science has also done a study on worry and it's, uh, it's kind of scary. They found that worry has no physical mental, emotional benefit. Like fear and pain sometimes is a benefit. It seems bad, but it's actually a good thing because it leads to other things. But worry, they couldn't find one good thing. And here's the scary part. They list worry as the leading pathway to mental illness and depression. A little a little scary. The leading pathway to mental illness and depression. Where where is a thief? Worry robs you of peace and joy. Corey 10 boom said it. Well, she said this. She said worry does not empty. Tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength. It's really good. The English word uh for worry comes from the root word to strangle. Worry really ends up strangling. You can even paralyze a person from taking action. You can get so scared and so worried that you you are not able to physically react anymore. Jesus was well aware of this. He said it in his conversations many times. He would lead his conversations with the words do not be afraid or fear, not. In fact, it's recorded in the New Testament over 100 times. This phrase do not fear, do not be afraid. Uh The Greek word for worry comes from the word meaning pulled apart. And isn't that just how worry works? Hope pulls us in one direction and worry tends to pull us in the opposite direction. It's, it's like getting on a train. A train is, is it only goes in one direction and either your, your train is going to go down the tracks of worry or if you get that train turned around, it can actually head down the tracks of faith and trust and that's what we're going to try and help you do this morning. Um We're going to look at Paul's answer to worry. If you brought a Bible today, you can follow along in Philippians chapter four. Paul actually gives us kind of a roadmap kind of a guide to overcoming worry in our lives. Here's the interesting thing about Paul. If anybody had an opportunity to worry, it was Paul. He wrote this letter in jail in Rome waiting charges that he wasn't going to win. He was either going to be imprisoned for a long time or there were actually leaders that wanted to put him to death. And yet he writes to his readers in the church at Philippi. He says, do not be anxious for anything. Paul is saying, look, I'm not worried about it and neither should you worry affects us mentally. Worry affects us emotionally and as we mentioned, it can even affect us physically. Uh The first leg of the tripod in overcoming worry is in praying overcoming worry involves praying the right way. Let's look at verse six, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. There's a right way to pray and there's a wrong way to pray. And I know you think wait, there's a wrong way to pray. Well, maybe not wrong in the technical sense but ineffective. It doesn't land, the prayer doesn't get answered because uh we have prayers going up from desperate people who have never had a true connection with Jesus or with God. And then they get in a desperate situation and they just start launching prayers and I have this theory. But it's just, it's just me. I know I'm a little crazy about it, but it's just me. I think God looks at the phone from those unconnected people and it says on his phone, it says spam risk and God's like, I'm just gonna let it go to voicemail, right? Ok. So that's probably not scripturally true, but that's just the way I think about it anyway. So is he picking up the phone when you, when you call, if you have accepted Jesus as your savior, then the answer is absolutely yes. Now can an unsafe person connect with God in prayer? Yes. But the Bible says, it has to be a penitent heart. You know what a penitent heart is? It's a heart that is asking for repentance and forgiveness. And asking for, for Jesus to come in and, and, and redeem them and yes, those prayers will be answered by God. They are not ignored. So Paul lays out the model for us to follow. He calls it prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. He gives us a triangle of how to pray rifle praying in three steps. If you would, prayer means worship, fly, bringing your request before God. The key word here is worshipful. We tend to sometimes rush to God with our needs list. God, I need this God, I need this go God, I need this right away. God, I need this right away. And really, Paul is saying, take a moment and worship God, take a moment and worship God. What does that really mean? It, it understands the relationship, it understands the privilege that we have to even approach God, isn't it? This is just, this is just mind blowing. When you think about access and you think about politicians and famous people and athletes and musicians. If we had access to these people, our friends would be so impressed. Oh yeah, I got Michael Jordan on speed dial. We text all the time. Really? Oh yeah, Taylor Swift and I are like, we're like best friends. You want tickets, I get you tickets. Wow, folks, we have access to something far more important and far more powerful than that. Think about this when you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are granted access to the most powerful being in the universe. Sometimes we forget that sometimes we forget we have 24 7 access to God, the creator of all things. Wow. No wonder Paul says we need to come to him with privileged reverence. That's a religious term. I know. But it really means having the honor and the awe to come before God. That's the first thing we need to do. I mean, come on Marvel studios. Let's make a movie about God as a superhero. Am I right? The most powerful thing in the universe approaching God and reverence in prayer. And then we bring our supplications to him. That's the second point of the triangle. Supplication means uh honest, earnest sharing of our needs. Now, can we share worldly things with God? Can we share temporal worldly needs? Lord, I'm I'm desperate. I need some money. Lord, I'm hurting. I need some help. Lord, I, I have a broken relationship. I need it restored. The answer is yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. God does not mind bringing your petitions to him that will solve your short term needs. But understand that God's overall goal is to not only give you the, the short term goals to get you through that time, but really, he wants to give you eternal things that will last a lifetime. He wants to give you things like peace and joy and spiritual growth and love. Can he answer your, your prayers with things Yes, but here's Joyce Meyer has a great quote. She says this. She said, you know, God can give us joy without things but things without joy or without. God will never give us joy. I'll say it again. God can give us joy without things but things without God will never give us joy. One of the strongest lessons I ever learned in prayer came from one of my Mount Rushmore heroes, CS Lewis, Those of you that know me, know, I'm a big fan of CS Lewis. Now, CS Lewis very quickly, never fell in love. As a, as a teenager, never dated, didn't have any relationships with, with girls, didn't think it was important, didn't want to do it. Just thought hes on his path to be a religious scholar. I don't have time for that. And he thought he would just live his life out as a single person. And then she came along and he fell madly in love and in his forties, they fell in love, they got married. Life was good. It was wonderful. You can read it in some of his writings at the time, how joyful it was in the way he would write his letters and his, his thesis and things. And then she got stricken with cancer is a really heartbreaking story. And it was not looking good. And on his way to teach his classes at Oxford, he would, he would go to the chapel every morning and he would just pray and pray and pray. And one day, one of his colleagues, a cynical atheist scholar who worked with him at the, on the faculty said, Dr Lewis, I feel so bad about what's happening to your wife. But Dr Lewis, do you really think by praying, you can change God's mind? And CS Lewis looked up with tears in his eyes and he said, this said, I don't pray to change God. I pray to God because it changes me. Isn't that awesome? Isn't that a great way to look at prayer? I don't pray to change God. I pray to God because it changes me. And then look at the promises that come from rightful praying in verse seven and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, the peace of God, which no human can fully understand. You know, you have people that actually have been to heaven and they wrote books and they made a movie and they come back and the one thing they all have in common was they could not believe how peaceful it was to be in that presence in heaven. I'm not going to comment on the validity of this or that the other thing, but the peace thing I understand, we get away from this lost and fallen world, we get away from the stress and the worry of this world and we live in peace with God, which no human can really understand will guard the two areas that really hold the worry in your life, your heart and your mind, your heart is your feelings and your mind is your thinking, which brings us to the second leg of the tripod. Overcoming. Worry involves thinking the right way, wrongful thinking leads us down the wrong path. Worry really when you think about it is meditating on the wrong things. Worry is really meditating on the negatives on what can go wrong, right? And Paul says that we need to meditate on the positives and more important, we need to meditate on the right spiritual positives. We need to discipline our minds by spending time in God's word. We need to let the good thoughts land and the bad thoughts just fly away. I get this from Max Cato who is a really clever writer and he's got a beautiful analogy. He Max Cato says this. He says you are the air traffic controller of your own mind and you get to decide which planes land and which planes just have to fly away. And when the plane of worry comes and says hello. Is this a plane flight? Is this a plane of worry? Can we land in your mind? No, you're the air traffic controller just fly away. You don't get to land in my mind and when something good and righteous and spiritual comes along, you're like, yes, you can land in my mind. You see, isn't that great meditating on scripture? Verses is a great way to hold off the airplanes of worry and let the airplanes of faith and trust land in your mind. Proverbs chapter four says it this way in verses 20 to 22 it says my Children attend to my words says the Lord consent and submit, consent, accept, submit, believe to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight. Keep them in the center of your heart. Now watch this. This is really key for. They are life, they are life to those who find them healing and health to all their flesh. Let me ask you this question. Do you get healing and health from worry there worrying about something, make you feel better physically. Oh I feel so much better now that I worried about that all day. No. Does worrying about something add to your physical health. No, Paul says or Proverb says life comes in healing and health when you meditate on the word of God folks, if you don't remember anything else today and you walk out what is oh, it was nice. The music was good. OK, great. Remember this, OK. I want you to remember one thing today. It's this. There is power in the word of God. It's OK. If you say amen here, amen. There is power in the word of God. There is power in the word of God. There is power in the word of God. Come on. Amen. Thank you. Appreciate that. There is power in scripture verses and speaking them out loud is one of the best ways to fend off the demons that try to rob you of your joy. Putting the scripture verses on your lips and speaking them out loud is a great way to fend off the planes of worry. You know, when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, when the devil came to him in the wilderness, Jesus didn't try to argue with him on the devil's level. I mean, Jesus didn't be like uh excuse me, Satan, I don't think you realize who my father is. Oh, yeah. Do you understand that my father is? Yeah, I could call on my father right now. I'm sure Jesus talked like this. Ok? I could call my father right now and he would send legions of angels to squish you like a bug smash you into 1000 pieces. No, Jesus didn't do that. He didn't argue with saying, you know what he did quoted scripture, quoted scripture. Defend off Satan folks. How can we do any better than that? Right? How can we do any better than defend off evil with quoting scripture? And then let's look at verse eight. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is, right? Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, good repute is a good report. Ok? If there is any excellence in anything worthy of praise. Let your mind dwell on these things. Let your mind meditate on these things. Here's the answer. Here's how we get it right. Here's how we control our mind. Here's how we, we, we shape our thinking. Here's how we get on the train tracks down the right way of faith and trust as we meditate on scripture, Paul, Paul understood the chaos of this world. It's so important to control what you think and how you think whatever is true. Don't believe Satan's lies, whatever is true. Don't believe the world's lies. Can I just, can, I just take a quick side trip? Just a quick side trip. Can I just, I just got to get this out? I'm so sorry. Don't, don't believe the cable news network programs that you watch. All right. I got it out. Don't turn to the cable news networks for your truth. You understand the cable news networks are out for one thing, money and they will do what they need to do to get the ratings, to get the advertising, to get the money in their pockets. That's their priority. Is it truth? No. And watching the cable news networks, does it really give you confidence or does it make you worry even more? Let's be honest. Right. I mean, if you want to add to your worry, if you want to pour fuel on the fire of worry. Yeah. Go ahead and just, just, you know, obsess on these cable news networks, folks don't get your truth there. Ok. I'm done. I'm done off the soap box. I'm off. Ok. What is true is God's promises. God's promises are true. Hey, let's cling to those, right? Whatever is honorable, right? And pure. Are there dishonorable things in the world? Yes. Are there unjust things in the world? Yes. Are there unfair things in the world every day? Paul says, don't obsess over them. Don't meditate on them. Don't dwell on them. Don't focus your attention on them and allow them to control your thinking. Focus on the honorable, the good, the pure, whatever is lovely and of good report. I see the words good report. I'm reminded of being back in school and I was working towards a degree. You know, we need to be students that major in noble thinking, noble thoughts. You won't find that on Twitter. Set your mind on things above the Bible says be a peacemaker, not a peace destroyer. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers in Matthew five, not the chaos makers, whatever possesses virtue and praise. You know, we all have built in radar that tells us when something doesn't look right. Smell right. Seem right. We got fish this week on the email. Some of you are there some fishing. It was, it was supposed to be Norton Lifelock, which we we we are part of and they were like you owe us money for the annual, your upcoming annual bill pay this and if you don't agree with it, call this number and, and blah, blah, blah. And I thought it doesn't look quite right. It doesn't feel quite right because that's not how I pay my bill for Norton Lifelock. And then I read in the paragraph, this was almost hilarious. It said thank you for your love and support of Norton Lifelock. Norton doesn't talk to me that way. It's never thanked me for my love. I've never thanked you. Thank you for your loving. Not, no, I knew something was up. So I called the number I knew was legit and sure enough, they tracked it down. It was just a scam. It was just somebody fishing. They wanted me to call the customer support number and then they were going to try to get my credit card information and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we all have that built in radar. Something doesn't feel quite right. And Paul says, look, when, when you get those senses that, that pop up, let's deal with them. Let's kick them out folks. I'm gonna tell you every phase of your life, there's going to be evil knocking at the door. You, you will not have a time when, when you're not tempted and, and there's, there's, there's worry, anxiety or evil that's knocking on your door because we live in a lost and fallen world. It's all around us. But here's the thing. You get the choice whether to invite the evil in you get the choice whether you want to give war a seat at the table where you eat. And when I mean eat here, I mean, spiritually eat, you spiritually eat, you get your fuel, your knowledge, your wisdom, your strength, your spiritual fuel. And when you, when you invite worry to have a seat at your table, now you've tainted your spiritual food, right? Tolerating unclean things in your mind will eventually become the actions that you take, which is why Paul includes the third leg of the tripod. Overcoming worry involves living the right way. Overcoming. Worry involves living the right way. Sin results in chaos and worry, obedience results in peace and trust. Satan is the author of chaos. God is the author of peace. If it's peaceful, it's from God. If it's chaos, it's from the devil. We start to recognize these living out. Your faith is crucial to fending off worry. John always said it this way when he, when he preaches, he said buying paint at Home Depot isn't enough. Just hearing God's word isn't enough. What do you have to do with paint? You have to take it home when you have to apply it, take God's word home and apply it, live out your faith and then your faith will grow. Look at verse nine, Paul says the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the and the God of peace shall be with you. We'll come back to that last part. Parents, this is going to get a little uncomfortable. Are you ready? Here we go. Parents answer this truthfully. Are you comfortable saying these words to your kids? Kids? The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in your mom and me practice these things. Oh, a little scary. Right. Uh, Children, the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in your parents practice these things. Wow, that puts a huge responsibility. Yeah, it does. It's one of the greatest things you can do as parents has set the example. Your kids are going to learn more from how you live your life than by what you say to them as parents. You know that, right? So how you live your life is important, not just saying uh say as I say, but do as I do not just talking the talk, walking the walk that all that, that great youth counseling stuff. Are you setting the right example? Wow. Notice how Paul balances the four activities here, learned and received, seen and heard, heard and seen. It's one thing to learn the truth. You can acknowledge the truth. Yeah, it's true. It's another thing to apply it. It's another thing to take it in inwardly in your heart and make it a part of your life. That is what Paul did. He didn't just preach the word of God. He lived the word of God. So his listeners could see the truth in his life. They could see the truth, not by just what he said to them, but by how he lived his life. Ah, church. Are we that Christian, are we that church? Are we the people that the community sees in us, truth has taken such a beating in our world today. Oh, my goodness. I don't want to worry. You. Sorry, I almost didn't put that line in, but it's going to get worse. Truth is it's, it's really getting harder and harder to, to show people. This is true. This is not, we got the Facebook thing and the Twitter thing and the artificial intelligence thing and the, the deep fake thing and, oh my goodness. Yeah, there's some good that can come from that. There's a whole lot of not good that can come from that. And if we as Bible believing Christians are having a hard time recognizing what is true and what is not think about the unsafe, think about the person who doesn't have a connection with Jesus trying to figure out what is real and what's not real, trying to figure out what is truth and what's not truth. You see folks we, we desperately need today. Men of God and women of God who not only speak the truth in love but live the truth in love. Can I get an amen with love? Like Jesus did like Jesus would if he were walking the earth today, we need to, we need to learn the word of God. We need to receive the word of God. We need to hear it and we need to do it. We need to apply it. James 122 says be doers of the word, not hearers only. I'm beating the drum here. I know. But are you seeing how important it is to put the word of God in your mind in your heart and on your lips speaking the word of God out loud. That's your best defense against worry and anxiety, memorizing scripture verses. And when those planes of worry come in, you just fend them off with scripture verses like Jesus did. And it's like, it's like, it's like it's like worry is a balloon. And when you say a scripture verse another warrior balloon, another scripture is another warrior balloon. Another scripture verse you get it. This is how it works. And then we get that, that great promise in the last part of verse nine. Let's throw that back up there again. Verse nine. Look at the last part of that verse. Sorry, Dustin Z. Here we go. Thanks. And the God of peace shall be with you. Wow. Think about it. The peace of God coming from the God of peace will be yours. Wow, peace, not chaos, peace, not worry, peace, not anxiety, peace, not sadness, peace. Who the peace of God coming from the God of peace will be yours. Having the peace of God is a great test whether you're in the will of God, I'm gonna say it again, but then we're gonna move on because I don't, that's a whole another sermon. There's a whole another sermon in that one. Having the peace of God is one test of whether you're not, you're in the will of God just chew on that one for a while when you're driving home today. Um I'm a big fan of Warren whereby those you know me, you know, I, I love him. Um He was the pastor at Moody Church when I was a professor at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Home of the Bears. I had to throw that in because my son's here. Alright. So we used to meet sometimes for breakfast because we'd get there early because the traffic was horrendous. They tell me it's not gotten better. It's actually gotten worse, which is hard to believe. But we used to leave like at six in the morning so we could beat the traffic and we'd get there for breakfast before our classes start at eight o'clock. Sometimes Warren whis me would come and join us at breakfast. Wow. Wow. I got to eat breakfast with Warren wears be he was such a gentle, kind, humble, brilliant. It was like you remember, uh you guys are too young for this. You remember the old Ef Hutton commercials from years and years ago when Ef Hutton talks, people. Listen. Anybody remember that? Am I alone here? All right. Thank you. Couple. Thank you. You've just now identified yourself as old. Ok, thank you. That's all right. When Warren wears be talked, wow. It was like, it was like God was talking to us pretty cool and yet he was loving. It was never judgmental. It was just always wise. It was just this wisdom coming from him. He gave me an expression. I never forgot. He said to me one time, he said, are you doing God's will? God's way. Wow, think about that. Am I doing God's will? God's way that stuck with me. I never forgot that. He gave me another one. I used it with Carter, my grandson just last week, just a week ago, we were coming home from golf and, and Carter. I don't know if you know my little 10 year old grandson, he is a philosopher and John will tell you this and grandma will tell you this and he just like grandma, if you had a choice between and then he would just go off, right? And he just say something crazy wild. So he's got this little thing. We're talking ethics here and he doesn't know it, but we're in what's called situational, situational ethics. And I said, Carter, let me just teach you something as a grandfather. I want you to remember this. I'll probably tell you 100 times. But try to remember it the first time here it is ready. There's no right way to do the wrong thing that's from Warren Wisby. There's no right way to do the wrong thing. There's your answer. There's your measuring stick, you know, excuse me? Allergies. I have termites in my home. You have termites in your home. I do. Yes, we all have termites in our home. We live in Arizona. Everybody's got termites. They told me this when I moved here. So what do you do? You call the exterminator? They get rid of the termites and what else they put down this special compound? I don't want to know what it is, but they put it around my house and it's supposed to help keep the termites out. Right? Think of worry as termites. Do you want them around? No, you don't. Do you want to make it hard for him to come back? Yes, you do. And Paul is saying, look, build your spiritual home around these three things. Pray the right way. Think the right way, live the right way as the worship team comes back up. I just want to finish with this this morning. Pardon me? Pardon? My allergies? Um, my nephew Derek is a career officer in the Air force and he served several tours in Iraq. I remember speaking to him when he first came home from Iraq the first time and I said, I said, were you scared? Were you nervous? And he's like, no, not really because I lived in the green zone. I said what he goes. Yeah. I don't know if you knew this, but they built a, what's called a green zone in Baghdad. And it was acreage, I mean, acres of stuff, but it was heavily secured. And once you got past the gate and you got into the compound, you felt very safe. And he said to me, something very interesting. This is why I want to bring it into today's message. He said, we knew the enemy was watching us all the time. We knew that we could look across the street and there they are watching us, we could look on top of the buildings and there they are watching us. We always knew the enemy was watching us, but they could never enter the compound. Wouldn't it be great if you set up your spiritual compound? Because worry is always gonna be there in this lost and fallen life we have, but it can't enter the compound. It's always gonna be across the street watching you. The devil is always going to be looking for an opportunity to get one in there. Wouldn't it be great if you took Paul's advice here in Philippians and you set up your life in such a way that you pray the right way. You think the right way you live the right way and you have this great defense against worry and anxiety. Let's pray together Heavenly Father. We thank you. We come to you with this attitude of gratitude. We are so thankful for all you've done, for giving us your son Jesus Christ. Lord, if there's anyone here this morning that is yet to accept Jesus as their savior, may the Holy Spirit move in their lives and may today be the day where they make the most important decision of their life. Say yes, Lord, I want that, I want that access to the creator of the universe. I want to be adopted into God's family. I want to live in eternity with God in heaven forever. And Lord, may we build our spiritual compound? May we build the hedge of protection around our family by living the right way, praying the right way, thinking the right way, keeping the anxiety and the worry from having a part of robbing us from the peace and joy. And may the peace of God coming from the God of peace lead us Lord as we continue to serve you in whatever we do, may we continue to do God's will, God's way for it's in jesus' name. We ask this, amen.