An Attitude Adjustment: Claim the Joy
Dr. Tom Pace
Philippians 4:4-7
August 21, 2016

We begin a new sermon series today titled “A Change of Attitude.” We’re going to look at Philippians 4 for the next three weeks and I’d like you to listen now as we hear the Scripture read this morning.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4 NRSV)
Let’s pray. Gracious God, open us up today. Open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel. And then, Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
I want to begin today by telling you about two people that I know. The first is a man named Tom – it’s not me and he’s not a member of our church. Don’t look around you trying to pinpoint him. Tom is a remarkable guy. He’s always full of joy. Every time I meet him and I say, “How are you doing?” he says, “Terrific!” And I always think, “He really can’t be that terrific all the time. Maybe today you’re terrific but you weren’t terrific last time.” I just know because I know some of the things going on in his life. I know some of the challenges he’s faced. But there’s just a joy inside him that I sure wish I had. I want to have. I’ve longed for.
Let me tell you about another man. This man has recently joined our church and he’s been in a struggle with cancer over a number of years. He joined our church and a Sunday school class. Wonderful guy. He’s not always full of that same joy in the sense that when you see him you don’t think, “Oh, what an upbeat guy he is!” But he’s a nice guy and he reminds me more of me.
I was talking to him this week. He called me and I returned his call, and in the midst of the conversation I asked him about his health. He said, “You know, my cancer is in remission. Things are good and I’m staying after it.” Then I said, “Well, how are your spirits?” He said these words and they jumped right out at me – maybe because I was working on this sermon. He said, “I have decided that you can be miserable and make everyone around you miserable or you can live the life that you have been given as it is.”
It was the first three words that jumped out at me. “I have decided.”
There is a sense in which we have a decision to make about how we will deal with the world around us. I don’t know what your life will bring but you have a decision to make about how you will deal with it.
I want to talk over the next three weeks about attitude. I believe that in the fourth chapter of Philippians there is much of what we can learn about our attitudes just in that chapter.
I’m going to read Philippians 4 every single morning from the beginning of it to the end of it. It’s not that long, it’ll take me about three minutes. For the next three weeks I’m going to read it every day. Every single morning. I want to challenge you to do the same thing and let it remind you of the practices we’re trying to focus on, and a decision about how you’re going to live your life.
Our sermon series could be summed up in the words of the great prophet Patti LaBelle who said, “I’m feelin’ good from my head to my shoes, I know where I’m going, what I gotta do. I’ve tidied up my point of view, I’ve got a new attitude.”
I was looking for Patti LaBelle here today. I didn’t think of that till this morning in the shower or I’m confident that they would have been willing to sing it for us. “I’ve got a new attitude!”
So let’s look at the Scripture and see what it teaches us. Let’s just jump right in, you’ve got it in front of you and I hope you’ll look with me.
First, “rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice.”
Now I began by saying I wish I had what my friend Tom has which is this joy inside him. And I implied that it was something you’ve got, but that’s not what we see in Scripture. It is listed here as a verb – “rejoice!” It’s something you do. It’s not something you get. Like you can hold it but it’s something you do, it’s something you practice. It’s a discipline of your life. It’s a habit you engage in. “Rejoice in the Lord always! Again, I say, rejoice!”
Rejoice always. Not in only good times and not in only bad times, but in good times and bad times. Rejoice always.
Now let me make a couple of disclaimers right up front. First, I’m not talking about clinical depression. And I’m not talking about anxiety disorders. These are clinical pathologies, they are diseases, they are chemical changes in the brain. They’re real and they’re powerful. If you’re struggling with clinical depression you’re not going to be able to practice your way out of it or smile your way out of it, or grit your teeth the way out of it or read your Bible the way out of it.
People will come and talk to me about depression and I’ll say, “You need to go see a therapist. You need to see a physician. There are antidepressants you can take that can make a great difference in your life. I’ve been on antidepressants as I’ve faced clinical depression. You’re not going to be able to just sort of ‘Bible your way out of that.’” That’s a disease and God gave us amazing resources for dealing with them.
What I’m talking about is something different. I’m talking about this sense we have where we ride this roller coaster of emotions all the time. When things are not going well we’re really down, and they’re really up, and then we’re really down. It’s like we’re connected and all of our happiness and all of our joy is all tied into the circumstances and the things that are going on in our lives.
We need to train ourselves that that isn’t what we do. We don’t focus on what’s going on in our lives as the up and downs but there’s something deeper that gives us joy in which we rejoice.
One of the books that I would recommend that everyone read – it’s probably on my top five – is a book by Viktor Frankl. He was a therapist who was in the Nazi concentration camps. The book is called Man’s Search for Meaning and in it he makes this simple observation. He talks about what he saw in the camps and he said, “They can take away all of our freedoms except the last human freedom, the freedom to determine one’s own attitude in any circumstance. The freedom to choose one’s own way.”
I have decided how I want to react to the world around me. Now I’m not saying you never get sad or that you never have bad days or that bad things don’t happen to you. In fact those emotions are all God-given to us. There’s a difference though between joy and happiness. Joy is this deep sense of being connected to a source of life that isn’t out there but is up there and in here. It’s something different than just being happy. And joy is something we can have.
We’re going to sing at the end “Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice, give thanks and sing!” and we say, “In gladness and in woe” we rejoice. “Rejoice always!”
That leads us to the second component. Rejoice in the Lord.
There are two words that we use in the English language that have to do with joy. In the Greek – the New Testament is written in Greek – there are completely different words. One of the words is enjoy and that has to do with the world around us, what’s going on in our lives. We enjoy a good steak. We enjoy a chicken fried steak with cream gravy. Salt. We enjoy pecan pie with ice cream. We enjoy banana pudding. I love banana pudding.
See enjoy has to do with the world around us. Rejoice is a different word. In the Greek the word is chairo and it’s the same word as charis which means grace or charisma which means gift. Rejoice comes from that word. It has to do with this experience of the presence of God in our lives.
So those of you who are grammarians, enjoy is a transitive verb, meaning it has a direct object. You enjoy something. Rejoice is an intransitive word – it has an indirect object. You don’t rejoice something, you rejoice with someone or something.
Paul says later in Romans 5, “So we rejoice in our sufferings.” Paul doesn’t say, “So we enjoy our sufferings.” It’s not that the sufferings are good things for us. It’s we rejoice in the midst of them. We rejoice in the midst of our sufferings.
Here’s the image I want to use because I think it’s the best picture I can give and I use it with some fear and trepidation because it’s the image of marriage. I want to use it not as a way of saying, “This is what marriage ought to be like” … that’s a different sermon.
This is how the Scripture uses marriage as the parallel, as a model for what our relationship with God is supposed to be like. Paul talks about that. He says, “We love one another in marriage the way Christ loves the church.” There’s a parallel between Christ and the church and husbands and wives loving each other.
Have you ever noticed that when you have a wedding ceremony there is such a focus on the things that are ahead? We say, “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” Why do we say that? Because we know that’s what ahead. We know that there are going to be good times and there are going to be bad times. That’s life. So what we’re saying in marriage is, “I’ve got you and you’ve got me. And side by side we’re going to face these things that come at us. We can handle these together.”
And the joy that we have is not going to be in those things, the joy that we have is in one another. In the midst of this life that’s coming our way. So that’s the image I want you to hang on to when you say “Rejoice in the Lord!” It’s not “I’m rejoicing because life is wonderful and everything’s good. I’m rejoicing because I have this relationship with God that nothing can separate me from.
In marriage there is a caveat, isn’t there? At the very end of the vow we say, “Till death do us part.” And there will be a time that death parts people. And the sadness, broken-heartedness, is going to be there.
But we don’t say that in our relationship with Jesus. In fact we say exactly the opposite. Romans 8 is perhaps the most famous passage in Scripture: “For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth or anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing will separate us.
I can handle anything that comes my way. I can handle death, I can handle life, I can handle wonderful things or I can handle terrible things. It’s because I have that relationship with you, O Lord. And it’s in that relationship that I will rejoice.
You might have noted that the cross has two pieces. A vertical piece and a horizontal piece. We’ve talked about that a lot. The up and down piece represents a relationship with God and the horizontal piece is our relationship with others. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.”
But here’s what I want you to notice. It’s the vertical piece that holds up the horizontal piece. If the vertical piece isn’t stable then the horizontal piece is going to shake. So what we do is in the midst of life, of this roller coaster of life, we tie ourselves to something that doesn’t wobble or shake. We tie ourselves to something that’s solid, that not even death can take away. In that we will rejoice.
Paul doesn’t pretend that there are no problems. He says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.” So what are the challenges that could pull us apart? Well, anything and everything. Those are the things that could get in the way.
If you read through Philippians you’ll see some examples as he gives some exhortations to the church there. He begins the chapter, “I urge Euodias and Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.”
Conflict. Conflict will turn your head away from that relationship and distract you and keep you from rejoicing. Then he says, “Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women for they have struggled beside me in the work of the Gospel.” Exhaustion. Isolation. Loneliness.
Near the end of the chapter, “You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel when I left Macedonia no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving.” Financial trouble. Personal need. Debt collectors. Anything and everything can turn our heads if we’re not careful.
In fact, sometimes it’s nothing. Someone was telling me the other day that the difference between fear and anxiety is that fear is of something that’s actually there, and anxiety is of something that only might be there. It may come or it may not. I don’t know if that’s the official definition but it makes sense to me. Sometimes I’ve been anxious and I don’t even know what I’m anxious about. You get up in the morning and you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach and you think, “I don’t even know what that is. I don’t know. What am I scared of?”
Anything and everything and sometimes it’s nothing. So what do we do with all that that’ll turn our heads? “In anything and everything make your requests in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving known to God.” Remember, the purpose of prayer is not to make what we want to happen actually happen, but to build our relationship with Christ. Intimacy with God in Christ is the purpose of prayer.
Just like when I talk to my wife, it’s not to get what I want. When I talk to my wife it’s to build relationship. That’s why we talk. That’s why you visit with one another. Because in that talking we build relationship. When we talk to God it’s not to make God do what we want God, to do, we’re smarter than that. No, we do it because we want to have that intimacy. If I can have that intimacy with God, then whatever comes my way I believe I can handle.
Now, look, what happens when many of you have faced stressful situations that put pressure on your family. And what you find is that you’re being pulled apart. What do you need to do? You need to focus on getting that relationship stronger so together you can handle it.
When these incredible stressors come our way we may find our relationship with God beginning to falter. What do we do? “In prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” we pray. We pray. We build that relationship stronger and stronger so we can rejoice in every circumstance. Not happy in every circumstance. You can be deeply sad, you can grieve with a broken heart. But there’s still that realization that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That’s the vertical pillar.
So what’s the payoff? The Scripture says, “And the God of peace will be with you.” I love one translation I read where it says, “And God’s peace that don’t make no sense will be with you.” That even though logic would tell you in the midst of this storm you should be a mess, there will be a centeredness.
Dr. Amy Simpson, who’s the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City pointed me to a podcast of “This American Life” from last July. And in it he tells this amazing story about the Second World War. Before the war began for the United States, Japan had invaded Manchuria, which is part of China. As soon as Pearl Harbor happened, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the soldiers came into a school in China – in Manchuria – that was a school for mostly the children of Christian missionaries that were there from all over the world. The United States, and Belgium and Canada and they were all in China and their kids were going to school there.
Most of them were girls, I think there was a boys’ school somewhere else. This was co-ed but the vast majority were girls. The soldiers captured all of the students and their teachers; their parents were captured and taken somewhere else. But they were all taken to a prison camp. They were in a prison camp for four years throughout the Second World War until they were liberated.
They were there part of the time and then they were taken to a place called Wellhausen, which was worse – it was actually a concentration camp. The children were taken there along with their teachers.
Many of the children were part of an organization of girls called Girl Guides, the predecessor of Girl Scouts. And the leaders of the Girl Guides were called Brown Owls. I don’t know why I find that so funny. I can imagine their owl outfits as they’re leading these Girl Guides.
Now here’s the motto of Girl Guides. It’s “A Girl Guide smiles and sings under any difficulties.” So the teachers decided that they could still do Girl Guides in a Japanese prison camp. And they did. They sang and they prayed and they did all those things. They interviewed this one woman who was 84 who had been there in the prison camp. At least at the time she was interviewed she was 84.
I want to read to you what she said because this just grabbed me. Mary Previte is her name. She was one of the girls. She said, “So you’re eating some kind of glop made out of maybe boiled animal grain. Broom corn that the Chinese feed to their animals was often what the Japanese fed us. And you’re eating it out of a soap dish or a tin can. And here comes Miss Stark behind you. [One of the Brown Owls]. And she says, ‘Mary Taylor, do not slouch over your food while you are eating. Do not talk while you have food in your mouth, and there are not two sets of manners. One set of manners for the princesses in Buckingham Palace and another set of manners for the Wellhausen Concentration Camp.’” I can just imagine that.
Here’s what Miss Stark is saying to Mary Taylor, “Look, you be who are regardless of what’s going on around you. You’re going to be who you’ve been trained to be. You’re going to rejoice, you’re going to practice that and live out that verb no matter what’s happening around you.”
They did sing, they sang Girl Scout songs like you and I would know, “Day is done, gone the sun, from the sea, from the sky, all is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”
Can you imagine singing that every night before you went to bed in a concentration camp?
As they marched from their first camp into Wellhausen they sang a song from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble.”
So no matter the circumstance, in gladness and in woe, when your heart is broken or your heart is soaring, rejoice in the Lord. If you have that relationship, you can handle anything.
Lord God, we confess that too often our hopes, our spirits, are tied to the circumstances around us, rather than in relationship with you. O God, help us decide to have that attitude in which we rejoice regardless because we have you. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.