Now in turn to Psalm 46, when Luther was having trouble, and he and Melanchthon were struggling in difficult days in the Reformation, he'd say, come, Philip, let's sing Psalm 46 together. And you know, of course, that he based his great hymn on the first part of that, of this psalm. wonderful truth that no matter what the circumstances the believer faces, God is his present help in trouble. So please follow and I'll read this wonderful song. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling, There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of tabernacle of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her just at the break of dawn. The nations raged. The kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice. The earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the Lord who has made desolations in the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob. is our refuge. Amen. Let's pray. Please take your Bibles and we'll turn to Philippians chapter 4. Philippians 4. In the book of Proverbs we read in chapter 12 and verse 25, that anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression. Anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression, or as the NIV puts it, an anxious heart weighs a man down. And Paul, in this fourth chapter, turns his attention to that particular problem of anxiety or worry. The word anxiety first appeared in the English language in the 16th century deriving from a Latin word which means to strangle. And worry comes from an old English word that also means to strangle and we can understand, we can relate to that I suppose because anxiety and worry tend to do that in our lives. They tend to have that kind of effect and they certainly tend to strangle the joy and strength out of our lives. Paul wants us to stand fast. You'll remember what he says in verse 1 and how he exhorts in light of what's gone before and in light of what's coming, he says he wants us to stand fast. And he wants us to live lives that really honor the Lord Jesus Christ because we're to stand fast in the Lord and live lives that are consistent with being in the Lord. And so he wants us to be those who are characterized by the kind of love that he manifests, by the unity that he urges upon them, by the joy that he says ought to characterize God's people, by the gentleness, which is really the gentleness of Christ, and remembering that the Lord is at hand. But if we're going to manifest these things, and in particular if we're going to manifest joy, then We must know how to deal with anxiety, and we must know how to deal with worry. If we're going to know the kind of peace that God wants us to know, then certainly we have to know how to respond and how to deal with, in a Christian way, the problem of anxiety. So Paul addresses that problem and then gives us the biblical remedy. And so we read in verses 6 and 7, Be anxious for nothing 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 minds through Christ Jesus. So, do you ever have any anxiety in your life? Well, if you do, then here is the Apostle Paul's and really God's response and God's remedy to that problem in your life. Let's think first of all about the problem of anxiety because Paul says, be anxious for nothing. Now the word anxiety that he uses there is a word that we find used in the New Testament in a good sense and in a bad sense. There is good worry and there is bad worry. concern, which is legitimate, and there is anxiety, which Paul says we ought not to have. Now, the good worry is this, the concern that is right and proper, we find in these kinds of verses, 1 Corinthians 7, 33 and 34, where Paul says that when you have a husband, he is caring about pleasing his wife. That's the kind of thing he cares about. That is, that's the kind of anxiety that he has. He wants to please his wife. Paul says, now that's all fine. 1 Corinthians 12, 25 and 26, it talks about the fact that all the various members of the body care about one another. And that's also good and fine. The various parts of the body, and he's talking about the members in the church, they care about one another. They worry about one another. Are these people doing well? Am I edifying them? Am I encouraging them? And so on and so forth. That's a good kind of concern. 1 Corinthians 11.28, Paul says, or 2 Corinthians 11.28, Paul says that he has not only to go through the kind of trouble and tribulation that he articulates in the preceding context, but he also says that in addition to all of that, I have the care of all the churches upon me. That is, I'm concerned about them. How are these people doing? And so he is anxious in the right and the proper sense about these kinds of things. And that's all in keeping with the way we ought to be as Christians. There are legitimate concerns that we have. And we seek to address those concerns. But there is also bad worry. There is anxiety, fretfulness. And this is what Paul's talking about. And this is wrong. And he warns us about it. And he says, you have to stop. There is anxiety that dominates. It controls us. It's all that we think about in the situation that arises and we're anxious and we're worried and this whole thing rules us and it almost incapacitates us so that we're not good for anything else. And all we are is this anxious and worried about this particular thing and we feel as if we can do nothing about it and we're so absorbed in it and so anxious about it. This situation that worries us and produces all of this anxiety and so there is This kind of anxiety that just dominates our lives, dominates our thoughts, and so we can't even fall asleep at night because our minds are going a mile a minute all focused on these things. Anxiety is the kind of thing that can destroy our perspective. And we begin to think that everything is wrong. Everything is all gone awry. Everything is black and bleak and discouraging. And God is not there it seems, and God is not in it. And God doesn't seem to care even. Doesn't seem to care if we're drowning. And then probably even if He did care, He probably isn't able to deal with this situation because though we know He's omnipotent, yet this is such a big problem that Not even God would be able to deal with it. So even that's no good after all. And so it's a anxiety can be a thing that just destroys our perspective, our biblical perspective and our good theology goes out the window when the trouble comes in this door. And the anxiety can be something that dictates our view of the future, because when we look ahead and look at what lies ahead and what's on the horizon. We think that also is terribly bleak and terrible and awful. And so many things could go wrong and so many things are probably going to go wrong. And we imagine all kinds of things that are going to go wrong in the time to come. And so it dictates to us our view of the future. Look at Mark chapter 13 and verse 11. And we see a form of this word, Word that Paul uses for anxiety here. We see a form of it in Mark chapter 13 and verse 11. Mark 13, verse 11. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. So don't worry about it beforehand. Now, we tend to do that all the time. It's very easy for us to drift into that. We worry about these things beforehand, before they are even upon us. And we couple that with all kinds of imaginary scenarios. But that's the kind of thing that Paul is talking about. And he is addressing this anxiety that dominates and controls that can very easily lead to wrong thoughts of God and of life and lead to thoughts about what might be and what might occur in the time to come. Now, there are all kinds of occasions for this anxiety, all kinds of situations that lead to and are occasions for us to worry. We might worry, for instance, about material possessions. You know, people worry about material possessions that they don't have, that they'd like to have, that they want to have, that they feel they need to have, that for life to be livable and enjoyable, they must have, and that they're working to have, and expending all kinds of energy to have. And so, all kinds of worry and anxiety about these material things that they're running after, or material things that they're trying to maintain. Proverbs or rather Ecclesiastes talks a fair bit about all this stuff that these people have accumulated now. All that it has brought is all kinds of anxiety about how they can keep it, how they can protect it, how they can build it up a little bit, but also protect it from disappearing and protect it from people who would waste it. And so now they have all this stuff, but now they are anxious about keeping all this stuff. And so those kinds of things, material possessions, and then present trials. The fact of the matter is that God's people go through tremendous trials. You become a Christian doesn't mean that life's going to be easy for you. And it is staggering sometimes to see what God's people have to go through. Well, we don't always respond well to those trials. And sometimes we are terribly anxious about those kinds of things and terribly anxious about what might even go wrong further in our situations and our difficulties. Future uncertainties. What is going to happen? And having to bear with the fact that there are certain things about the future that are unclear. We don't know what's going to happen here. We don't know which door God's going to lead us through. We don't know what career choice to make. We don't know where this is going to lead. And for people like us who want to be in control and can at times be controlled freaks, it's very difficult for us to cope with that kind of thing. We like to have control in every area of our lives. And so it's anxiety producing when things seem to be out of our control and in fact are out of our control. And then there's the problem of imagination. Imagination. The situations arise and circumstances arise, but They can be anxiety-producing, but then we think, and then we imagine, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones says, what a prolific cause of anxiety is the imagination. You're confronted with a situation, but if it were merely that, you would probably be able to lie down and go to sleep. But the imagination comes in and you begin to think, now what if this or that should happen? Everything is fairly under control tonight, but what if by tomorrow the temperature should be up? And what if this condition should arise and lead to that? And you go on thinking for hours, and you're agitated, and you're worried, and you imagine all kinds of things. And I read this week a story, this little account of a man who said that one of his relatives was this kind of person, and she would say to, this woman had a servant, she'd say to the servant, oh, look, it's today, and tomorrow's going to be Monday, and it's Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then the week's gone. Well, okay. And so it produces all kinds of anxiety. So there are all kinds of occasions like that. There are circumstances in life, the kind of life that we, the time that we live today is also anxiety producing because we are those who are at the receiving end of all kinds of information that people in previous generations were not aware of. This is the information age, and so you go onto the internet, and you look at a newspaper, and you watch the news, and you not only now have the problems in your life, and the problems in your area of Ontario, and the letters that you get, and what we know of Canada, but now you know everything about the world, and it is really, as McLuhan said, a global village, more than it ever has been in the past. And so you know what's going on in Rwanda, and you know what's going on in Saudi Arabia, You know what's going on in China. You know what's going on in the North and South Pole. And we know about these things, and when you think about them, they can lead to all kinds of anxiety. So much so, that at times the people of God understand what the psalmist said in Psalm 77, verse 4, when he said, I am so troubled that I cannot speak. And sometimes that's the state in which God's people find themselves. Now you go over to Psalm 3, and you find here's a man who can lay down and sleep. Psalm 3 and verse 5. Psalm 3 and verse 5, and it says, I lay down and slept. I awoke for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. And sometimes Christians read that. And they read that with a certain degree of envy. I'd love to be able to lie down and sleep. At least, not sleep fitfully. Not sleep sporadically, but to sleep. Can you imagine? Several nights of sleeping right through. And waking up in the morning not tired. Because you've slept well and you've not been anxious. And sometimes Christians read that with a certain amount of envy. You go over to Psalm 112. Psalm 112 and verse 7. There's a godly man, and he will not be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is steadfast, trusting the Lord. Now, as I say, sometimes believers are so full of anxiety that they're afraid of those evil tidings. They imagine evil tidings coming, and that also produces a certain degree of anxiety as well. Well, Paul says you ought to stop that. Don't be anxious about anything. Don't have this kind of dominating, controlling anxiety and worry. It's the same thing that Jesus said back in Matthew chapter 6 in verse 31. The Lord Jesus uses the same word that Paul uses. And so the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 6 31. Therefore, do not worry, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? Or verse 25. Therefore, I say, do not worry about your life. what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, or what you will put on, and so on and so forth. And Jesus, in Matthew 6, 25 and following, has exactly the same message that Paul has in this passage. Now, stop it, he says. There's legitimate concern, and that's fine, but there is illegitimate concern and worry and anxiety. Put a stop to that, he says. That's the first thing. The second thing is the answer to anxiety. the answer to anxiety, because the question is, how do we do this? What's the answer to it? We would all certainly love to be free of anxiety. I don't know anybody who wants to be anxious, but how do we deal with it? Well, the answer is not just to say, don't worry. I don't know if you've ever had people tell you that. Well, I have, and I think I've told people that. you're full of anxiety, and they say, oh, don't worry. Just don't worry. Or, like that dumb song, don't worry, be happy. That's just stupid. So, you don't just say, don't worry, and that's not what the Bible says. It doesn't say, don't worry. It says, don't worry, and then it tells us something to do. It tells us something else. In the Scriptures, always, You see this again and again, especially in the New Testament. God says, now don't do this, but do this. Because it's practically impossible to just stop. Perhaps you've tried that thing. I'm going to stop worrying. And then you worry perhaps about whether you're going to be able to follow through on that. As you're worrying about that, you start worrying about what you were worrying about in the first place. So it's very difficult to just stop like that, and the Bible doesn't expect that. God knows what we're like. He knows how frail we are, the psalmist says. He knows we're dust. And so he says, don't do this, but do this. Here's the answer. And the answer is, well, this is Sunday school. The answer is really simple. I mean, the answer is prayer. The answer is prayer. The answer is the presence of God. Be anxious for nothing but. In everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God." There's the answer. Don't be anxious. Pray. Go over to Psalm 91, verses 1 and 2. Psalm 91. Psalm 91, verse 1. "'He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him I will trust. Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge. His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in the darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday." So they face a different set of anxiety-producing situations, but the answer is the same. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. God is my refuge and my fortress. I'm going to trust Him. One writer says, Time alone with God. Quiet before God. That is what we need. Our lives are so rushed that we begrudge a three-minute quiet time, and then we wonder where God is. But the psalmist has it right. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty. That's what we need. In these difficult circumstances of life, that's what we need. The presence of God. Now, let's think about the word that Paul uses here. The words. He uses, for instance, the word prayer. See verse 6. Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. This is the answer to the sleepless nights and the anxious days. The answer is really a Godward look. It's turning your eyes toward God. It's crying out to God. It's seeking the face of God in your distress. You see, this is what we're going to sing later. It's carrying everything to God in prayer. This is Jonah. And so there's Jonah in the belly of the fish, in the darkness and in the slime. And what happens? Well, he turns his eyes toward God. Can you imagine a more distressing and anxiety producing situation? How does he respond? Well, he turns to God and he cries to the Lord. This is Daniel. And Daniel faces lions. And if you keep praying, you're going to be thrown to lions. And so Daniel goes home. And how does he deal with this situation? Well, he prays as he always has done. And this is the disciples. The disciples are going out. They're excited about their faith. And they witness about the Lord Jesus Christ. And they're told, if you keep doing that, we're going to beat you. are going to physically beat you. And what do they do? Well, they respond by saying, turning to God and crying out and acknowledging the sovereign control of God and saying, Lord, work in such a way that Your name will be glorified. And they pray to God. So that's the thing then. When anxiety grips, you go to God. When anxiety grips, you go to God. That's the key. Look at Psalm 73. The psalmist in Psalm 73 is grappling that most troubling of issues, the problem of evil, the problem of the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked. And he doesn't understand and he's struggling and he doesn't see why things are happening as they're happening and why God is not doing something. How is he going to come to some kind of resolution? Well, Psalm 73, verse 17, until I went into the sanctuary of God, Then I understood their end. The answer was something he found in the presence of God. That's where God met with him and dealt with him and taught him and showed him and enabled him to understand things from a divine and a biblical perspective. But the point is this. He turns to God, doesn't he? So don't be anxious, but turn to God. Don't be anxious, but pray. And the particular word that Paul uses here is a word that has the idea of worship. And so you are now found in the presence of God. That's the idea. It's kind of a general word for prayer. It's just being there in the presence of God. And that's the first thing. And in our trouble, that's the first thing we need to understand. Be found in the presence of God. That's where you're going to get an answer and you're going to get help. So there's the first thing, prayer. The psalmist again and again demonstrates that, and it's something we ought to learn. It's what Paul drives home to us right away. The second thing is supplication, verse six. The anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And this particular word, supplication, suggests that we need to come and bring our particular problems to God. The things that we need to ask Him about. Now, bring these things. Bring these supplications to God. You need to couple it with the other word that Paul uses there in verse 6 when he says, Let your requests be made known to God. So come and worship and be found in His presence and have a Godward perspective and then tell Him about it. And pour out your heart to him. And be honest about that which is troubling you. One writer says, when was the last time you prayed explicitly and at length about the things that worry you and trouble you and plague you? Did you take them out and recount them to God one by one, laying your burdens on him? I suspect that very often as Christians, we don't do that. We just end up being troubled about these things and never specifically pray about them. We ought to do that. We ought to bring our petitions to God. We ought to let our requests be made known to God and pour them out before him. We'll either tend to try to handle them on our own, or we'll try to get the advice of other people as to how to handle them on our own. But we very easily don't bring these things into the presence of God, and we ought to. Remember 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 7. that we ought to cast all our cares upon him because he cares for us. Casting all your cares upon him, Peter says, that's the kind of thing you ought to do. That word casting is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19. You take a blanket, you've got a horse and you take a blanket and you throw the blanket over so as to ready that horse, perhaps in our day for a saddle or whatever, but you're going to get it ready. But you're taking that blanket and you're kind of throwing it on the horse like that. And it's used in that way. Well, Peter says, this is what you ought to do with your problems. You take it and you cast it on to the Lord. And you don't cast it on and then pull it off again. You wouldn't do that with the blanket, and you shouldn't do that with your problems. You take it and you just cast it on to the Lord. And he says, that's what we ought to do. Go over to Psalm 37 and verse 5, and it says very much the same thing. Psalm 37 and verse 5. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass. And there's that phrase, commit your way to the Lord. The idea there is something of rolling the burden of your life upon the Lord. You just take this situation and this problem and just roll it so that now it's His. It's that kind of thing. So you bring these petitions to Him. You let your request be made known to God, and you leave it there. That's easier said than done. That's what the instruction is. That's what God says we ought to be like, and we ought to be like the children. What do the children do? Well, they tell their mom and dad what the situation is, and they seem to be supremely confident that mom and dad can do it. They can fix it. There's a certain naivete when it comes to the children. They think mom and dad can do pretty much anything for a little while, and then of course they begin to see what we're really like. But that naivety in the child is realism in the Christian, because the child thinks mom and dad can do pretty much anything. We know that our God can do anything and that with God, nothing shall be impossible. So we ought to pray and we ought to supplicate God and bring our petitions to him. Thirdly, we ought to do it with thanksgiving. We ought to do it with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the spirit in which we ought to bring our petitions and our prayers to God. And that's how we should come. We have problems. And sometimes we can come to God in kind of a pouting way, as if we're really upset about the way things are in our lives. really disturbed about the providences that have come our way, but the fact of the matter is we ought to come with thanksgiving no matter how bad things are. We have reasons to be thankful. It doesn't matter if, well, as Psalm 46 says, the mountains are being cast into the midst of the sea in your life in a metaphorical sense. Even if that's happening, you have reason to be thankful. Dr. Lloyd-Jones writes, well, now what can I be thankful for? He says, we have to do that deliberately, and it's something that we can do. We must remind ourselves of it. We must say, I may be in trouble at the moment, but I can thank God for my salvation and that he has sent his son to die on the cross for me and for my sins. There is a terrible problem facing me, I know, but he has done that for me. I thank God that He has sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world. I will thank Him for bearing my sins in His own body and on the tree. I'll thank Him for rising again for my justification. I'll pour out my heart in thanksgiving for that. I'll thank Him for the many blessings I've received in the past. And so on and so on and so on. And it's important as you come to remember that. And remember that we, though we do at times face grievous troubles, We have every reason to be thankful. Fourthly, we bring everything to God. Remember what Paul says, be anxious for nothing. There's nothing in our lives that should produce that kind of anxiety, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God. So bring it all to Him. There is nothing so grand that is too big for Him and nothing so small that is beneath Him in your life. And you know, there are things in your life that other people, they couldn't care less about. And in their lives, it's not something they would be at all concerned about. But it's a matter of concern to you. You bring these things to God. In everything, you bring these things to the Lord. You think of Proverbs 21.1, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. He turns it whichever way he wants. So the Lord is able to deal with things. So you have a job interview. And you bring that to God. You say, Lord, please have dealings with this individual. Please work this out. And so you bring that and any number of things. You bring it all to the Lord. So in everything we bring it to the Lord. Fifthly, constantly we bring these things before the Lord. And that's what Paul is saying here when he says, let your requests be made known to God. Here is something that you need to be doing. It's not something that you do once at the point of your conversion and then hope that it kind of covers the rest of your life. No, it's something that is to be an ongoing thing, present. And so every moment, this is the kind of thing that you do as a Christian. You let your requests be made known to God. And so every day of your life, Christian, now here's a thought that probably doesn't seem all that extraordinary, but the fact of the matter is it is. Every day of the rest of your life, you will be able to bring your concerns and your requests to God. There's not a day, there's not going to be an hour when the throne room of God is not open to you, when you do not have access to God, when you're incommunicado with God. Never going to be a moment like that. It's not always that way with people. It's not always that way on a human level. It's been about a year now that my father died, and there are many, many a time when something happens, and something funny, or something interesting, or I read something, and I think to myself, I've got to tell my dad that. And I can't, because he's gone. It'll never be that way with my father who is in heaven. He's always there. And so what Paul says here, I can do that. That's remarkable. I can do that. I can let my requests be made known to God anytime, all the time, constantly. I can bring it to Him, roll it upon Him, cast it upon Him, and lay it at His feet. And then we do it with confidence, don't we? We do it with confidence because Paul says, be anxious for nothing, pray, supplicate, Let your request be made known to God, and the Lord's going to help you. We'll talk about how He does it in a moment. But He's going to help you. He's going to answer. He's going to deal with you. And so we have great confidence in God. He's convinced that God is sovereign, God is powerful, God is loving, God is caring, God is gracious, and so on and so forth. And so bring it to Him. The Lord's going to help you. And not only can He be sure about that for Himself, but He's sure about it for all Christians. And so we can bring our petitions to Him because God will help us. We don't have the kind of God that Rabbi Kushner had. You know, he says, well, you know, God is powerful. God is good, but there's suffering. So we've got to lose one of these two. If there's suffering in the world, God is either not good or he's not powerful. And so we have to dismiss one. So he dismisses power. Well, you see, we don't have to do that and we must never do that. Our God is good and our God is powerful. He is loving and he is kind. He is omnipotent. He is sovereign. And so we bring everything to Him and we do it with great confidence because we know that He's able to help. Children eventually grow up and say, well, you know, my dad can't do this and my dad can't do that. But we, the more we grow up, the more we realize what our Father can do and how great He really is and how worthy of our supreme confidence He really is. So Paul's saying, don't be anxious. And the answer is prayer. And we're going to sing, what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. But all the peace we often forfeit, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. So if you learn anything from tonight, learn this. Take it to God in prayer. Lastly, the replacement for anxiety, the replacement. What does God give us for anxiety? He says, now let me take that away from you. You ought not to be anxious. What does he give us in return? Well, he doesn't say, Paul doesn't say that you shouldn't be anxious because everything is going to work out just right. Because if you pray, then God's going to take that problem away. He doesn't say that at all. And in many cases, that's exactly what doesn't happen. In the case of Paul's thorn, you know that that's precisely what God do. God left the thorn there for his sanctifying purpose. But what God does is this, verse seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So two things. First of all, their hearts will be guarded. Philippi, as you probably remember, was a was a Roman city and the key Roman city in the city where you would be likely to see Roman soldiers from time to time. And so these people would have been very familiar with the idea of walking past a building and seeing a Roman sentry there. And what's his purpose? Well, his purpose there is to guard, so that no interloper gets through, so that no individual who has no authority gets into the building. No, there's a Roman sentry there. That building is being garrisoned, it's being guarded. Paul says, that's what God will do with you. Your heart and your mind will be garrisoned by God. He's going to place his sentries there so that no individual and no problem can get in there. No agitating thought, no anxious thought can get in. And God will guard your mind. He'll protect you. Harry Ironside said this. He says, I can't do this by myself. I may tell myself over and over that I will not worry. I won't fret. But my thoughts, like untamed horses with the bit in their mouth, if I may use such an illustration, seem to run away with me. We understand that. Or like an attacking army, they crowd into the citadel of my mind and threaten to overwhelm me. But God Himself, by the Holy Spirit, has engaged to so garrison my mind and protect my restless heart, that my thoughts shall neither run away with me nor overwhelm me. Every thought will be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Thus, I shall enjoy the peace of God." So the first thing God promises to do is He says, I will garrison your mind. I'll guard your thoughts. Secondly, they will not only be guarded, but they will know peace. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts. That's the guard, that's the sentry that God will place over your heart and mind. His peace. He is the God of peace. Christ Himself is our peace. And God, by His Spirit, will guard our minds and give us peace. He'll give us the kind of peace that Isaiah talks about. You know, Isaiah 26 and verse 3. Isaiah 26 and verse 3. And the prophet says, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you. And so God will keep this individual in peace, peace, whose mind is stayed upon him, whose mind is focused upon God. Perfect peace, the kind of peace we were singing about earlier. Peace, perfect peace that really passes understanding, whose mind is stayed on God. Those are the ones who will have peace. Now, to be stayed on God means to lean upon Him. It means to cast the weight of yourself upon God. so that he is foundational and he is the one who is establishing you. So you cast yourself upon him, your state upon him, and he gives you peace. Your mind is focused on him. Your thoughts don't run willy-nilly to everything, but they're focused on him. You're thinking about him. Interestingly, that's why Paul goes on in verses 7 and 8 to talk about where our thoughts should be, because so often that's where the battleground is. But our thoughts are focused on God, and the promise is that God will give us extraordinary peace, peace that people don't understand, peace that sometimes Christians don't grasp. Dr. Lloyd-Jones talks about a couple who were in the Salvation Army, a man by the name of John George Carpenter. He tells how he and his wife had to part with their daughter, a lovely girl of whom they were so fond and proud and who had dedicated her life to foreign missions. And suddenly she was taken ill with typhoid fever. Of course, they began to pray, but Dr. Carpenter and Mrs. Carpenter somehow felt that although they couldn't explain it, they couldn't pray for the child's recovery. They went on praying, but their prayer was, thou canst heal her if thou wilt. They couldn't positively ask God to heal her, only thou canst heal if thou wilt. And they couldn't go any further. And they went on like that for six weeks, and then this beautiful girl died. And the morning she died, Carpenter said to his wife, he said, you know, I'm aware of a strange and curious calm within. And she said, I feel exactly the same. And she said to him, this must be the peace of God. It was the peace of God keeping the heart and mind quiet in the sense that they could not upset the individual. And they said they felt almost guilty. And perhaps you've found that at times. You have such a peace, and people are expecting you to be anxious. But you have such a peace, and you're not sure why. And people are not sure why. And people think, well, you know, they're in denial, things like that. But it's the peace of God. That's the wonderful thing. When you are in the presence of God, and when you pour these things out to God, and you let your requests be made known to God, that's His promise. He'll give you peace. Now, if you're not a Christian, it's not that kind of peace that you need. We who are Christians, we treasure that. We need that. And that's why we pray. You need peace with God. Paul's talking about the peace of God, and we love that. But the foundational thing is peace with God. That's what you need if you're not a Christian. Henry David Thoreau was told, somebody said to him, you know, you need to get right with God. You need to make your peace with God. He says, well, I don't think so. He says, I'm not at war with God. The fact of the matter is that the Bible says you are, and the natural heart is enmity against God, and God's wrath abides over the sinner. And so there needs to be peace with God, isn't there? There needs to be reconciliation. And that's why you need to come to Christ, because he's the only one who can reconcile you to God. And when you believe in him, then there is peace with God. Romans 5, 1, Therefore, having been justified through faith in Christ, we have peace with God. The war's ended. There's reconciliation that's taken place with God. And then you go on in the Christian life, you see, and then as you face battles, you pray and God gives you the peace of God, which is such a treasure. and such a blessing. And we thank God for that. So how do we deal with anxiety? Pray. And the blessing of God upon those who pray. Peace. Let's pray. Our great God and Father, how we thank you for this marvelous text and how we thank you, Father, that you know all about our circumstances. You know, Lord, that we are those who in your providence will face trials and tribulations. And Lord, we do not begrudge that. We do not resent that. We know that you know what is best. And so we submit to you and we pray then that you will help us to be men and women of prayer. Help us not to be faithless. Help us to be those who have great faith in God and who, in all circumstances of our lives, turn to you and trust you. And we pray then, Lord, that by your grace, we shall indeed know that peace of God that passes all understanding. And grant this, we ask, for our good and for the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.