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Come on, clap your hands one more time, everybody. I want to read a few verses of Scripture found in the book of Philippians, chapter four. We're in a series called Arresting Anxiousness, and I want to continue a lesson I started last week. Found taken from Philippians 4, verse 4, where Paul says these words, rejoice in the Lord. Always. Say it again. Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything. But in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So I want to stop the reading of Scripture. There, we're still talking. From this subject. I am putting anxiousness under arrest. I'm putting anxiousness under arrest. This particular passage allows us to eavesdrop on a conversation that a spiritual leader named Paul is having with a burgeoning group of believers in northern Greece in a colony called Philippi. Hence, the book is called Philippians Paul's Letter to Believers in Philippi. And in Philippians chapter four, we get some insight into a conversation that Paul is having with people who have new life but need to learn how to live life a new way. They have new life. They're what we would call saved, born again, converted. They have new life, but they need to learn how to live this new life a new way. And so Paul, in this particular part of the passage, is giving them exposure in terms of the way life can be lived as it relates to anxiousness. This letter to believers in Philippi shows us the power of the principle of exposure. Exposure awakens an appetite for something we didn't know we wanted because we didn't know it existed. Exposure awakens in us an appetite for something we didn't even know we wanted because we didn't know it existed. And once a person has been exposed, they can't be unexposed. Once I've seen it, I can't unsee it. Therefore, exposure is an instrument of God's providence. It is something that God uses to accomplish his purpose in our life. Therefore, exposure is a gift of grace. What you've been exposed to isn't random, haphazard, or coincidental. God strategically arranges for us to be exposed to certain things at certain times because he wants a certain appetite to be awakened in us, not so that we want what he did for them, but so that we want what he wants to do for us. Did you hear what I just said? Somebody say exposure. This is why jealousy is simply mismanaged exposure. It's when you become envious of something you should be inspired by. And if exposure is a gift of grace, it means we should all, from time to time, pause and ask ourselves the question, why me? Why has God allowed me to see all the stuff he's allowed me to see? Why has God allowed me to witness all of the things he's allowed me to witness? Why has God allowed me to be exposed to all of the things that he's exposed me to? Has he exposed me to what he's exposed me to just so I could see he could do it for them? Or is he exposing me to what he did for them, to anchor a belief in me regarding what he can do for me? And what Paul is trying to give believers here in Philippi is some exposure. He's saying, you've been living life away, that you don't have to live it. He says, you're anointed, but you're still anxious. You saved, but you're still stressed. You are a worshiper, but when you get back in the car, you become a warrior. And he's saying, you can live that way if you choose to live that way. You can live that way all the way to heaven if you choose to live that way, but you don't have to live that way. And I want to expose you to another way you can live where you're not arrested by anxiousness, but you put anxiousness under arrest. So Paul writes to these believers in Philippi, and he says to them, be anxious for nothing. Now, the command itself, the instruction itself, is education. Whenever God says something, he's teaching us something. Whenever he says something, he's teaching us something. So when God uses Paul to tell believers in Philippi to be anxious for nothing, he is letting believers in Philippi know that you don't have to be anxious. That when he instructs us to do something, his instruction is revealing potential you possess you didn't know you possessed until he gave you the instruction. So when he tells you to do something, he's telling you what you can do, even if you hadn't done it before, you missed it. So when he says, be anxious for nothing, it's as if he's saying, I know up to this point, you live your life in anxiousness, but I'm telling you not to be anxious, because you might not even know you don't have to live the way you've been living. Anxiousness, it is an inner feeling. It is a feeling of inner unrest and worry that is fueled by the fear of outcomes we may never experience. It's an emotional thief that robs us of today's peace in anticipation of tomorrow's problems. And Paul is telling believers, you can be free from this. Now listen to this. Now he's telling believers, you can be free from this. They're believers. And he's telling them, this feeling of inner unrest is something you can be free from. This is an emotional Emancipation Proclamation. This is their spiritual and emotional. Juneteenth. Y'all missed it. Come on. Come on. Think about it. Juneteenth, Juneteenth, Juneteenth. Like, the Emancipation Proclamation had already been issued. So they were free, but they didn't know it. Come on. And so Paul is giving them this spiritual and emotional Juneteenth. He's saying, you've been living this way because you didn't know you don't have to live this way. So he says to them, be anxious for nothing. And they had a lot to be anxious about. Did you hear what I just said? They had a lot to be anxious about. They were dealing with political persecution because Philippi was a Roman colony deeply loyal to the Roman emperor and the Philippian Christians. Allegiance to Jesus as Lord clashed with Caesar being Lord, and as a result, they face harassment and social exclusion and even political violence for their faith. They were dealing with not only political persecution, they were facing economic hardship because now they were living their life according to Christian ethics. And some of the activity that they engaged in to get income was no longer suitable for them. So now they say, because I'm a Christian, I'm not going to engage in predatory, dishonest, exploited practices to get income. So now they got a standard spiritually, but they suffering economically. I love Jesus, but I got bills. Y'all aren't talking to me. Come on here. And I know you walk by faith and not by sight, but there's a certain way that you've been accustomed to taking care of your family and paying your bills, and now all of a sudden, you have this spiritual revolutionary experience, and now this begins to conflict with your Christian values. That's a recipe for some anxiousness. I don't want to upset God or the bank. So they got political persecution, they've got economic hardship, and they got spiritual confusion because they're new in the faith, so their faith is fragile. And, Pastor, they were dealing with same people in Galatia Judaizers. So these were people who were coming in, telling him, you not saved because you're not saved. The way I say you should be saved because they were trying to conflate Jewish law with salvation by grace through faith. And so they were telling him, you still got to do the stuff in the Old Testament. Come on here. Even though we're in a New Testament dispensation. So they're dealing with political persecution, economic hardship, and spiritual confusion. That's a lot. And in the midst of all of that, they're dealing with relational drama, because anxiousness produces irritability. And when you irritable, you're not graceful relationally. When you're irritable, you're not gentle. So in verse five, he tells them, let your gentleness be evident to all. He's saying your anxiousness about other areas is causing you to mismanage yourself relationally. So you got a problem with anxiousness. The problem you're dealing with, with anxiousness is producing irritability in you. Your irritability is creating relational damage. So now you're trying to fix a problem by causing another problem. And so anxiousness has you trying to fix a problem by causing another problem that's going to have you in a position where there's something else that you got to be anxious about. So he says, y'all got a lot. But my word to you still is. Wait a minute, P.D. i don't care if it's political persecution. I don't care if it's economic hardship. I don't care if it's spiritual confusion, and I don't care if it's relational drama. Be anxious for nothing. But I love what Paul does here, because Paul is a. Not just a theologian, he's a pastoral theologian, which. Which means now he doesn't just want to give you biblical truth. He wants to build a bridge from biblical truth to everyday life. The pastor in him won't just let him tell people be anxious for nothing. The pastor in him won't just let him tell people not to be anxious. The pastor in him wants. Wants to help lead people into an experience where they know how to not be anxious. And in the text, he gives them some insight on how to put their anxiousness under arrest. We talked about a couple of them last week. He says, if you're going to put your anxiousness under arrest, you got to address your interpretation, right? Paul wrote this letter while he was incarcerated in Rome. Now, most people, if I'm in prison, I'm thinking about how I'm going to get out. He's thinking about how he's going to get them out of anxiousness, which means he's not as concerned with the event as we would be if we're in that situation. Because what creates anxiousness is not what happens to you, it's what you think it means. It's the conversations you start having with you about what this means. And if you don't know how to interrupt those conversations and catch yourself, you'll find yourself going in this downward mental spiral, and you'll end up in despair and anxiousness because you are anticipating the worst. It is faith in the worst. Did you hear what I just said? Yeah. So we talked about that last week. Last week we said. So I not only have to address my interpretation, I have to express intentional appreciation. And we talk to you about the spiritual discipline of gratitude, which comes through the practicing of something called praise or worship. Because I cannot express praise without mindfulness. I can't praise God without my mind being full of God. Does that make sense? Yep. And so we talked about how that spiritual discipline brings the presence of God, which is a temporary eviction of everything that's not like Him. So when you're in his presence, you feel your best because his presence evicts everything that's not like Him. Come on here. David said, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Right? So it's a temporary eviction of everything that's not like Him. So many people are trying to chase peace, but you only find peace when you find his presence. Am I making sense? All right. Today I want to share with you the third thing he says in the text. Because it's not just address our interpretation or express intentional appreciation. The text tells us also we need to engage in strategic supplication. Watch what he says in the text. Don't be anxious about anything. But in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. Notice what he says. He says here in every situation, by prayer and petition. Some of you, if you're familiar with the scripture, in King James, the New King James, it says, by prayer and supplication. Come on here. So it is strategic supplication. Here he's saying strategic prayer is a tool that helps arrest and anxiousness. But he uses the word here petition or supplication. Why? Because all prayer isn't the same. In Ephesians 6, this same man who wrote this letter to believers in Philippi writes a letter to believers in Ephesus in the book of Ephesians, and he says in verse 18 to them, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers. Do you see that? All kind which means there are different kinds of prayers. So I gotta know what kind of prayer to use based on what kind of situation I'm in. So when someone says I'm praying, my question is, what kind prayer? It's not that prayer doesn't work, but sometimes you're writing the wrong prescription for that particular diagnosis. It's not that the medicine doesn't work. The medicine don't work for that. You don't need stitches when you got a sinus infection, and you don't need Allegra when you got a cut on your arm. It's not that the medicine doesn't work. It's just that it doesn't work for that. And Paul says all kinds of prayers because all prayer isn't the same. There's a prayer of intercession. We call people who have a leaning toward this intercessors and intercessors. I know it's football season. Intercessors are interceptors. Did you hear what I just said over here? Okay, for those of you that are unfamiliar, an interception. Whoo. Is when someone on one team tries to throw the ball to somebody on the same team, but somebody from the other team intercepts the ball. So something could have got to them and would have got to them, but it didn't get to them because something intercepted it. And when you are an intercessor, there are some things that the enemy's been throwing in people's direction and your prayers intercepted. Somebody ought to shout because an accident got intercepted, a layoff got intercepted. Destruction got intercepted. It's a prayer of intercession. It means to stand in the gap for somebody else. It means I'm going to stand between them. I'm going to put my prayers between them and their problem. It's me not using my faith for me. It's me using my faith for someone else. It is what Mary and Martha did in John 11 for Lazarus. He's dead. When you dead, you can't pray for yourself. But faith is so powerful. Jesus responded to the intercession of Mary and Martha. And when Lazarus couldn't believe for his own resurrection, Jesus took the faith of Mary and Martha and produced a miracle in the life of Lazarus. I feel something pushing me right here because some of you have a Lazarus in your life, and he or she doesn't have the faith to experience a resurrection. But if you will be like Mary and Martha, the same God that did it for them, intercessor, that's prayer, right? You got intercession, you got invocation. We're getting ready to launch Change College soon, where we train ministers. We want people to be theologically rich. Spirit empowered, but theologically rich. So if they're called upon at an event to do an invocation, they know what that means. You ever listen to somebody pray at something you like? I'm glad they praying. But why they praying that? Okay, maybe I tried it at the next service. Y'all come on. You like, why they praying that? We had a funeral. They just prayed for deliverance from chains. I mean, come on. Am I making sense? We're at a church service. They praying. They praying for God to bless the food. We had a church service. An invocation means to invoke him, not something from him. With an invocation. I'm not saying give me something. I'm asking give me you. I'm not saying send something. I'm saying send yourself. There's benediction, which means final blessing. So during the service, we have prayers of invocation. We've got prayers of supplication, we got prayers of intercession, and we conclude the service with prayers of benediction. We don't just do that just to do that. We do that because in the benediction, you're asking for something different than the invocation. The invocation. We're asking for him to show up. Supplication, we're asking him to send something to us. Benediction, we're asking him to seal and protect what we ask him to send. Because all prayer isn't the same. So Paul says this should be supplication, which means to request, it means to petition. It means to ask. Strategic supplication. This is what's called I'm dontario. This is what's called Dr. Peter C. Wagner, who's former director of School of Church Growth and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary, he calls this doc. He calls this smart bomb praying, which in the context of spiritual warfare emphasizes targeted strategic prayers aimed at the source of an issue, not the symptoms of an issue. This is the kind of prayer that dismantles the actual stronghold. So here's my question. Are you praying for what's making you anxious, or are you praying for your anxiousness? Because if I just keep praying about what's making me anxious, something else is gonna happen that's gonna make me anxious, and something else is gonna happen that's gonna make me anxious. Am I making sense? So I should not just pray about what's making me anxious. I need to pray about my anxiousness. So Paul is saying strategic intercession is A way strategic supplication is a way to arrest prayer. So anxiousness can be a symptom, an anemic prayer life. Now, when someone has anemia, when they're anemic, it doesn't mean they don't have blood. It means they don't have a lot of iron in it. They got blood, something missing. So when I say an anemic prayer life, it doesn't mean I don't have one. It means iron missing. And God uses the anxiousness to expose the lack of iron. He like them kind of little drive by prayers you've been doing. They not gonna arrest anxiousness. I got to go. He said, them little cute prayers you're doing, that's not gonna bless me, Lord. He's like, okay, but that's not gonna put anxiousness under arrest. This thing is aggressive and resilient and relentless, and you're free from it. And then it comes back and you think, them little cute prayers, where's the iron? So, Pastor, spiritually, what is the iron? It's five things, this kind of prayer. Here it is. Number one, it's prayer that's sincere. This is an approach to prayer that's free of the grip of pretension. What's pretension? It's the act of pretending or putting on an appearance of something that isn't genuine. I think sometimes we're praying, God's like, so when are we gonna talk about the real stuff? When are we gonna talk about. You hate them right now. I can't get the hate out your heart if you acting like it's not there. I don't hate them. Yes, you do. Admit it. So we can fix it. Y'all aren't talking to me. I see it's there. I know your thoughts from afar off. When are we going to talk about the real stuff? If it's not sincere, it doesn't have iron. God doesn't just want to heal what's burdening us. He wants to heal our blindness to our pride that's showing up in the way we come to him. Pretension is pride. You're bringing ego to the father. Say, when you gonna stop acting strong? You acting strong for them. This me. You got to keep yourself put together for them. You know me and you know you're about to fall apart. Let's talk about it. When are we gonna get real in prayer? God, I'm about to leave. I'm about to leave if you don't. Okay, next service. There's no iron in there. Sincere too. Spirit led this Is prayer that is guided and governed under the direction of the Holy Spirit. There are times where the Spirit burdens your heart on what to pray for. Does that make sense? Like it. Pray for this. Particularly in the era of intercession, people miss this so much. You could just be like Rand. Like you can build a treadmill and somebody say, pray for your child. And you're like, you have no idea. But the Holy Spirit knows. And not obeying promptings is what's quenching the spirit. Shutting down a shout is not quenching a spirit. Read Thessalonians Paul. That command wasn't even given in the context of corporate worship. He's talking about their daily life. Don't quench the spirit. The promptings, the nudges, the hunches, don't quench it. Number three, Specific prayers targeting not just the fruit of anxiousness, but the root, the symptoms. Not just the symptoms we feel. But what's the deep root of this? God is my ego at the root of my anxiousness. You know what I've been praying against in my life a lot? The idol of comfort. Because comfort can be at the root of anxiousness. Lord, I just want to stay comfortable. And then if something comes that threatens your comfort, it creates. Come on here. Anxiousness Specific. If it's not specific, it don't have iron in it. For submissive. An approach to prayer that sees prayer as a way to accomplish God's will, not manipulate our wishes. I think there are certain things God will remove on his timetable because sometimes stuff we want him to remove immediately is like a thorn. And he's like, I'm not gonna move this anxiousness immediately until I cultivate this habit of prayer in you so deep that when the anxiousness leave you, you won't leave. That kind of prayer. I need somebody to talk back to me in here. He says, I'm gonna let this linger for a minute to make sure that your response in prayer is not an act of desperation just to get liberation from anxiousness. I want prayer to become a part of your character. So I'm gonna let this linger for a while. I'm done Tario, so I got to submit. So good. He says, now I'm going to give you grace to handle this right now. Cuz right now your Christianity is too crisis dependent. I got to keep you in crisis to keep you close. So let me work something in you that's such a part of you that you don't leave me once you leave. Crisis number five. If it's not. If it's not. If it's not submissive, it doesn't have iron in it. Number five, serial prayer. You got to be a serial prayer. This is unwavering, unyielding, unrelenting prayer that survives discouragement. Can your prayer life survive discouragement that overcomes disappointment when you are disappointed, can your prayer life survive it and persist past doubt? When you're dealing with doubt, can you pray through it? God almighty. Come on here. I wish I had some at this point. I need my Pentecostal members now to back me up who know what it means to pray through. I said to pray through. I'm crying, but I'm gonna pray through these tears. And I'm discouraged, but I'm gonna pray through it. And I want to quit, but I'm gonna pray through it. I'm gonna pray until something happens. I feel. Lord have mercy. I need somebody that believes in push to pray until something happens. To contend in prayer. It is Tyler. Satan calls it contending in prayer. To be relentless against the anxiousness, because anxiousness will be relentless against you. To push back against the darkness. To say, every time you fight me, I'm gonna fight you back. Every time you fight me, I'mma fight you back. And I'm a fight until I win. Oh, because I refuse to keep living this way. This is the way Jesus overcame his anxiousness in the Garden of Gethsemane. The cross made him anxious, so much anxious till sweat began to come from his body like great drops of blood. And in the middle of the garden, he prayed a sincere prayer, no pretension. If it's possible, remove this cup from me. I know I said I would do it, but if there's a way out, I change the mind. I don't want to do it no more. That's real. Real. He had iron in his prayer. It was spirit led, submitted not my will, but yours be done. It was serial prayer. He had to pray through that anxiousness. Because he prayed for a while and he was still anxious. And the anxiousness created irritability in him, didn't it? Because he came out to the disciples, said, can't you watch with me one hour? Because anxiousness makes you irritable. You can't watch with me one hour. He went back to prayer and came back and they were asleep again. You can't watch with me one hour. Then on the third time, he came out and said, the Father must have gave you melatonin. God made some people go to sleep on you because you keep running out the garden to them. And it says you need to run back into the garden to me. You keep calling them, and I need you to call on me. We out of time. I'm not going to dishonor your time. But the Holy Spirit dealt with me about prioritizing your experience, even if it creates inconvenience. So I'm. So I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna dishonor your time and create chaos, but I am not going to cut off an experience in the presence of God or stop speaking before God stopped talking. So we figured a parking lot out. But if you come here, I'm gonna give you everything God got for you. Father, I pray in the name of Jesus. Father, I pray in the name of Jesus for a breakthrough in the area of anxiousness. God, would you set your people free? He whom the Son has set free, it's free indeed. Jesus, name.