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00:03 Malaysia.
00:27 Okay, that's all my Malay for today.
00:33 Uh you blame Yeden for this heden has got a very insidious plot. He will tell you why this is not my fault. It's his
00:40 fault. Okay. He will tell you not by doing. Great track. Take courage. My heart stay
00:49 steadfast. My soul is in the waiting.
00:55 And we sing this when fear and anxiety comes into our lives. And that's module
01:03 five. If you're new to FBC, this is a topic we introduce that happens once a
01:09 month. And we do get visitors that come. So you don't have to leave your church.
01:14 You can just come once a month. And we are going through this series. Just to give you a bit of backdrop if you're new
01:20 to us. The first three modules are generic. uh your family, your mind affects how
01:27 you think and the decisions you make. Moving on, we're going to go into specific topics. We did self-esteem last
01:35 month. Today, we're going to do fear and anxiety. We will do depression. We will
01:40 do dealing with healing uh hurt and hurt. We'll deal with bitterness. We'll
01:46 deal with this whole range of emotions. And I like to encourage you if you if you're a visitor just come once a month
01:52 and uh we'll go through them. Now why do this? Why I mean uh you know this is not
01:58 a hospital why is this necessary? Uh let me just get to this and today's topic is
02:04 a bit heavy. Now you know of all the suicides that have
02:10 happened his was probably the most shocking. Why? Number one, he's the
02:16 epitome of cool. Doesn't look stressed. He's very calm.
02:22 He's at the peak of self-actualization. I mean, who wants who what better job
02:29 can you get than to eat and get paid for that?
02:35 You know, go around to Pinang, eat, go to Vietnam. He's got a beautiful girlfriend, a
02:41 11year-old daughter that loves him. Yes, he may have had some history of alcoholism and drugs, but toxology
02:48 report shows he's got no history of depression despite what some reports are saying. So
02:56 why did he take his life? Now, now bear with me. Why we need to do this? Because right now in this United States, suicide
03:04 is the 10th highest reason for death. We live right now in the golden age of
03:11 humanity where poverty is at the lowest level where human mortality is at the
03:19 lowest level. People are living better, living older and yet suicides are going
03:26 up. And look at Malaysia. The star carried an article. Four in 10
03:33 Malaysians will suffer some form of mental ill health in their lifetime. So if you throw a stone, there's four of
03:40 you guys here out of every 10. Now it's a struggle. It's a painful
03:46 topic. So this morning, we do really need to deal a bit with this. And more so for us Asians, why? Because we don't
03:54 talk about these things. It's not something we you and I want to talk about.
03:60 Last uh two Sundays ago, I had the privilege of uh being with pastor Chris Chia. Those of you know him, he was our
04:07 camp speaker and uh they came down for their church camp. And I asked him, "What's your camp team?" You know what
04:13 was your camp team? Mental health. And he told me how in Australia he comes
04:18 from a college, a reform fivepoint, you name it. Evangelical college called more
04:24 college. and he named me the number of his friends in the college who were pastors who were divorced.
04:32 And while the church struggles with this and says you know what we shouldn't be talking about all this psychological
04:38 babble we should be teaching the gospel people in the church hurt
04:44 and where the hurt the world creeps in and the world offers you a substitute.
04:51 This is mindfulness meditation very easily the most prominent
04:57 self-medication or self-help therapy for fear anxiety in the last 10 years. You
05:03 Google this, check any clinical psychological book, anything you know uh
05:08 uh uh and they will recommend this. I have friends who go through issues they
05:13 all recommend this and the science is showing you it works. While the church
05:19 steps aside, the world comes in and offers a solution. I had a friend who
05:25 was from a church that told him, "Yoga is a sin. Yoga is a sin." And maybe that's true. And she was struggling lots
05:31 of issues. She privately went for yoga. So the church then puts her in a
05:37 position of guilt. On one hand, she has struggles. The church isn't helping her. Just say, "You
05:43 got to pray. You got to pray. You got to read your Bible more." It's not helping her. and the world officers. So now why
05:49 why is this some this is important? Bear with me. Mindfulness meditation comes
05:54 from this man called John Kabadzin. Google does it, Yahoo does it, Apple
05:60 does it, Facebook does it. It is the most trendy thing among millennials. But
06:07 John Kabad Zin gets mindfulness meditation from Zen Buddhism.
06:14 So what starts off as a simple thing to help your monkey mind to calm you down
06:19 eventually moves into this. You just Google mindfulness meditation on the
06:24 internet. So the church is ill equipped.
06:30 The church is ill equipped for the many in our midst that suffer. So let me just
06:36 read you something from Mark Devil in his latest or nine marks of a healthy church. And uh Pastor Mark passed this
06:42 to me. The gospel produces the church. The foundation of the church is the
06:48 gospel. The gospel promotes the church. That's the great commission. It plants
06:54 the church. That's the book of Acts. But it protects the church because the
06:59 gospel shepherds people. And so we do this series of talk to help us deal with
07:06 this. Now I want to qualify myself. We are not going to go into clinical stress
07:11 or or things like you know post-traumatic stress order. We're going to look at the basic things like all of
07:18 us suffer with. We all have this right. I I'm an anxious
07:23 type. I know this. I get I get worked up easily. So let's let's deal with this and see how it affects our Christian
07:30 walk. So let's uh let's all calm down. Take a deep breath.
07:37 That's what mindfulness meditation tells you. Clear your mind. Count 1 to 10. No,
07:43 don't don't. Let's pray. Lord, we just come before you now. But we come and we we we rafa.
07:51 We be still and we we lower and we we we sink with you, oh Lord.
07:58 And we will be still and know that you are God.
08:04 And we ask oh Lord this morning that you your presence be with us as we go through this topic because many of us if
08:10 not all of us suffer from this in many shades.
08:15 Teach us to remove our pride. Let this talk come from the gospel and
08:22 centered on the gospel and not on pop psychology.
08:27 And may your word so transform us. And we say this in Jesus name. Amen. Uh one
08:33 of the biggest struggles of doing this topic is that you do need to go into bit of the science. Um so I'm going to go a
08:39 little bit into the science. So first I qualify myself. I'm not a doctor. So all you doctors if I say something wrong please line up. You can taro me later.
08:47 But we do need to do a little bit of science. Uh and I I think God is the God of science. Yeah. So there's no reason
08:54 why we shouldn't talk about this. So here goes a little bit with regards to the signs of anxiety. Now your body has
09:02 what we call a central nervous system. There's another thing called the autonomic nervous system. All you
09:08 doctors here know it is 101. Autonomic is the right word. Is it is autonomous.
09:13 It goes by itself. It has two sides. Uh they call it the sympathetic arm and parasympathetic arm. I've been doing a
09:18 bit of reading. And the the parasympathetic arm is your rest and digest. That's why after you
09:25 eat ah s you feel very good. The body does this. It makes you calm down. Rest and digest.
09:34 Parasympathetic arm. The sympathetic arm is the opposite is your fight or flight.
09:41 And we're going to deal with that today. Now, what happens in your fight or flight? The fight or flight is where you
09:47 get stressed. And this is what happens. Now, there's a reason for it that your
09:53 pupils dilate. You get tense. Can you imagine if God didn't put this in you? You just had your lunch. Ah, sik pa.
10:00 Then the tiger comes in front of you. Ah, sick pa. You just had lunch. You're going to be his lunch very soon. So the
10:07 way God has wired the body is that it pushes these things up. Your heartbeat
10:12 goes up. Your pupils dilate. You're prepared to either fight or run. And
10:18 it's got to do very heavily with a hormone. You need to understand this
10:23 hormone. I think everyone is is good if you if you're struggling with stress to understand this is called cortisol.
10:31 You don't need to be a doctor but basic science is very helpful. It's called cortisol.
10:37 And what happens is that your adrenal gland pumps this out. It prepares you
10:43 for action. The brain gets the body ready. But here's what it does.
10:49 Because you're so focused on your problem, you can't sleep.
10:54 Your blood pressure goes up, your immune system is depressed, you don't feel like
11:00 eating. The whole idea is that once you see that lion and that lion goes away or
11:07 you run away, it goes back to rest and digest because the cortisol is not meant
11:14 to be on all the time. Now, here's our problem with modern society. You don't
11:20 get lions and tigers in front of you. You get a message saying your health is
11:26 bad. You get a fight with your wife. You get a lawyer's letter.
11:34 You find out your kid is doing something else. And the cortisol switch goes on.
11:39 And guess what? It never goes off. Because what cortisol does? It builds.
11:47 So you know what happens that when you talk to a person he appears very normal but the switch is still on you know you
11:54 know why because he's worrying about it he's just stuck at the back now as you get older is worse because one of the
12:01 thing that impedes it is growth hormone. Young people have it at our age we don't
12:07 and that's why cortisol produces stress. It is why they call it the stress
12:12 hormone. So here's a little bit of thing. Sometimes when we meet people who are very stressful, be gracious is
12:20 biological. Not everything is spiritual. You know, us reformed churches like to say, "Oh, he's going to attitude
12:26 problem." No, it's biological. Have a bit of grace. Now, I want you to keep this at the back of your mind. Now,
12:34 what are we saying? We are looking here that it affects so many things. Uh, here's another simple thing. You notice
12:41 they call it gut feeling. Why? Why do they call it gut? Why not liver feeling?
12:46 Why not kidney feeling? Because your gut talks to your brain. They call it the gut brain axis. It's birection
12:53 birectional, you know. That's why before you you do certain things, you get butterflies in your stomach. That's why
12:59 when you're anxious, you don't feel like eating. Now, what is God telling you? God is telling you
13:06 something. I think Mark Grisco put it the best. He's from nine uh this nine
13:12 hills church. I mean mass hills church fear in the mind causes stress in the
13:17 body. Now what does it mean? It means if we tackle this we have to tackle this
13:22 holistically. And sometimes when you look at the word
13:28 salvation the Greek word is soua. It is not salvation forgiveness of sins is to
13:35 make you whole. And God puts a spirit in you. That
13:41 spirit affects your soul which is the will which is the mind which is the
13:47 heart and from that it affects your body. It has to do that either that you
13:53 compartmentalize your life and you are not obedient to Romans 12 because Romans
13:58 12 is to present our bodies as a living sacrifice Old Testament language. You do
14:06 not take a lamb which is blemished and sick before God. You take a healthy
14:11 lamb. And it's our responsibility to do this. Now I'm going to ask three questions
14:18 today. What is your attitude when you face stress? How does praying help you face stress?
14:25 And why does your everyday thinking affect your stress? And the text we just had is probably the most famous text on
14:34 uh stress book of Philippians and that prayer. Now let me just ask a question.
14:41 Is stress bad for your health? Those of you who say yes, raise your hands. If
14:47 you don't, it means you think stress is very good for your health. How many of you say stress is bad for your health? Come on.
14:54 Okay, there's majority. Those who didn't put out their hairs all came to alpha and know the truth. So I'm
15:01 going to tell you what the science is telling. H you won't believe this but I'll tell you
15:07 what the science is saying. Stress is good for your health.
15:19 Stress is not bad for your health. Let me let me rework the question. Is how
15:24 you think about your stress bad for your health? The answer is a resounding yes.
15:32 That's why Romans 12:1-2 is always the anchor generic verse.
15:38 It's your mind. I give you two reasons for it. One is spiritual and then the other one is
15:45 biological. You have to go back to science. All right. No, let's go to the text. All right. And we all know this
15:50 and it's such a famous text. But the text is in context.
15:58 So people plug this verse without context because what Paul is doing, he
16:03 has one session that begins with a stressful fight between Udia and Synch, right? Tells them to reconcile and then
16:11 he begins this section and the verse before that is key. Now how do you know
16:17 it? Here's another reason because the two are tied by the word the Lord is near. When you're very stressful, what
16:24 do you want to know? You want to know that God is near you. So that's the key.
16:30 Rejoicing is the key. So let's break it down. There's two types of rejoicing.
16:36 One is impulsive. I won the lottery tree. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Not that kind of
16:42 rejoicing. It's a deterministic type of rejoicing. Now, what do you mean by that? Now, look
16:48 at the way the grammar is placed. All right, the grammar is important. Rejoice in the Lord always. Oh, you didn't
16:56 listen to me. I tell you one more time. I'll say it again. Rejoice is the in yourrface kind of rejoicing.
17:06 You got to get that true. You know, is the kind of rejoicing that says, you know what, I'm not going to get
17:12 depressed. is fighting words.
17:17 I'm not going to let this circumstance make me a victim. I'm going to rejoice. And I say it again. I'm going to
17:24 rejoice. Now, do we find support for this in the Bible? Tremendous.
17:31 I come to you in a while. Is all over Hebrews. One Peter is all over the Old Testament. Bear with me. Hey, brother.
17:40 s I got bad news. You asked me to rejoice. What kind of preacher are you? Now let
17:47 let us now define the characteristic of rejoice. Number one is a willpower kind
17:53 of rejoicing. Not the oh yeah not that yo don't behave I dance more for you.
18:01 Now there are two characteristics of it which is quite important. The first is this is gentle.
18:09 Now the Greek word is interesting here. Okay, we'll go to the Greek in a while. And the second is the Lord is near. So
18:16 let's break it down. Rejoice. How do you define it? Gentleness. What is gentleness? Is a horizontal relational
18:25 thing. Is how you and I relate because you and I stress each other out. Thank you very much.
18:31 Especially in church. And the second is a vertical.
18:37 Get the vertical right. You get the horizontal right. Now the gentleness here the Greek is found in first
18:43 Corinthians when when Paul says I came with you with a gentle spirit. It is shephering language
18:51 is the language of the good shepherd or the callous shepherd. The good in the
18:57 Greek chaos means the excellent shepherd that knows the flock. I find this very
19:03 helpful because I'm very confrontational. Okay. Now let me just go the other way the gentleness comes is
19:10 from James 3:17 and James 3:17 says the wisdom that comes from God is first and
19:16 foremost pure considerate and the King James
19:22 is called gentle meaning gentleness is
19:28 considerate ah now you understand so sometimes because
19:35 character like me beta Han, I get an email. Want to go and whack the guy
19:40 already. Correct. Not stress level goes up. Coffee soul just
19:46 went up. So the Bible tells you
19:58 I tell you for me this is my memory verse. There are days I get emails or
20:04 WhatsApp or thing I just get so worked up. No need. Uh today wife on break. So
20:11 okay use wife example. Yeah. You all don't tell her. Yeah. You
20:17 will tell her. But anyway you know husband and wife fight right. So sometime after fight you get the car
20:28 like gentle because it helps God is a good God and
20:37 you then realize that when you're in a fight with someone that stresses you and you tell yourself God I glorify you by
20:44 the living sacrifice by being gentle and handed. You know what happens? your cortisol just went down.
20:51 There's a biological reason for this and I cannot do that if the Lord is not near me because I have no impetus to do it.
20:60 But the moment I tie myself to the presence of God and Romans 10 tells us again we have not been given to the
21:06 spirit of fear but the spirit leads us to say aba father. Fear is not just the judgment of God is generic.
21:13 So no need to be anxious. Abba father and then it goes out. Now let us see
21:20 whether we find this in the book of Philippians and I'll tell you it's all
21:26 over the book of Philippians. It's all it's his fingerprints.
21:31 Now we don't have time to go into details but I'm going to give you a few. Okay. Verse 1 to8.
21:38 The story is some people are preaching to cause him trouble. Very stressful.
21:44 He rejoices. Then you have chapter 2:2.
21:50 They are fighting. He asked them, "Be joyful." 217, he poured out for like a offering,
21:57 meaning he's going to die. He rejoices. What's wrong with this guy? Notice none
22:04 of the rejoicing has got to do with something he gets. Now, we find this
22:09 again in Hebrews. In Hebrew 10:34, joyfully accepted the confiscation of
22:16 property. 1 Peter 4:12:13, rejoice during suffering.
22:24 So what's wrong with you Christians, man? Then you understand disciplehip. So what
22:31 is the key joy? And you find in chapter two, he takes joy and he says, I'll tell
22:38 you what is the joy that makes me complete. And here's the verse. Make my
22:45 joy complete. How? By this verse five. Your attitude should be the same as that
22:53 of Christ Jesus. Paul is easily the most stressful person
23:02 in history. But what we forget, a call to
23:08 disciplehip is a call to stress. You're picking up the cross.
23:15 But a call to disciplehip is a call to joy. Crazy.
23:22 I want to become Christian. Oh, good. You're going to be very stressed. You know that's actually what God's telling you
23:30 of course. So let's break this down. Now you may think at this point this is all just
23:36 willpower. Now there is the science to this and this is a really interesting
23:41 book and that's why I just said uh this very famous health psychologist Kelly
23:47 Mcgonal the book why stress is good for you and how to get good at it. Now let's
23:52 go a little bit into the science. and her talk her TED talk is the number
23:58 one TED talk of all time. Now let me just give you a bit of clinical science to back up scripture. They did studies
24:05 you know two they did three studies in the talk you can have it one is from Harvard and another Wisconsin university
24:13 very reputable um hospitals who do research and basically they did this they they took
24:20 three groups of people this group got lot of stress group A group B also a lot
24:25 of stress group B all sipping panina coladas at Bali beach no stress
24:30 group A is this got a lot of stress they think stress is Group B got a lot of stress. They think
24:37 the stress builds resilience. Group C no stress.
24:42 I ask you group A, group B, group C, which group do you think live the
24:49 longest? They use public death records to study this and then they check their health. Guess which group? Group B.
24:58 Group B. And this is what she wrote. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were
25:05 no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in
25:11 the study, including people who had relatively little stress. Now, I think this is quite groundbreaking and very
25:19 much in parallel to Philippians. And she said something which I thought was wow.
25:24 It looked like it came out of the book of Philippians. When you choose to view
25:30 your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage. And you
25:37 can understand why Paul can face death, can face persecution, can face people
25:46 defaming his name, can face uh all sorts of issues. And you know
25:52 what? His health is better. Stress is good for you.
26:01 Now think this through. Now you think at this moment, this is all psycho babel. You think at this moment we're just
26:07 talking about psychology. I will tell you this is a health psychologist. It's
26:13 biological. Let me introduce you to another. This is my last medical talk for the day. Then I
26:20 stop the next one. I'll do another one. This one even my doctor, my daughter knows it's called oxytocin.
26:27 If my kid knows it, you should know it. You know what's oxytocin? They done studies. You know if I if I if I go up
26:33 to someone and hug the person, you go, "Ah, sure." That's the release of oxytocin. You know where oxytocin
26:40 released the most in church doing praise and worship. So just when Jita is singing your
26:46 that's oxytocin is it's got even a nickname. It's called the cuddle hormone.
26:53 is the hormone that's released when you're in the abba father mode is the is
26:59 the hormone that's released in Philippians chapter 4 vers three the
27:08 lord is near but what we don't realize is oxytocin
27:16 is a stress hormone so Philippians 3 and 4 is True. The Lord
27:23 is near. Oxytocin coming up. Ma Philippians 4. Stress is coming. Ma.
27:28 Why? Because when you are under stress, your gland pushes these things out. It
27:38 pushes this thing out. All the science is showing you this. Why? Now I give you a simple example.
27:46 Have you ever had a case where you feeling very stressed and then something inside kicks inside and says I got to
27:53 talk to someone? That's oxytocin because it's a relational hormone.
27:59 That's why when you cuddle, it releases it. So God has hardwired you that not
28:05 only when cortisol comes out, he gave you something else to lower it. He gave you oxytocin.
28:11 So when you cry out, "Aba, father, the Lord is near." When you rejoice,
28:19 this thing pumps out and this thing makes you resilient.
28:26 Now I tell you that's if you pause and think deeply through this
28:32 is very powerful because what the Bible is telling you
28:37 when you read again and again rejoice in the midst of suffering rejoice when my
28:43 property is taken away rejoice. Yeah, crazy. Are you Christians? God is a good
28:49 God. If you can do that, your health improves. You think about that.
28:56 That's mindboggling. Let me give you an example.
29:02 That's a rat I caught in my office. That photograph I took on Friday. I came
29:08 to office very shocked. Wow. I had a great sermon. I'm very active. My office got rats.
29:14 The downstairs got restaurants. There and behold, there was a rat. I freaked out. I hate rats. I got trauma
29:21 from rats. I'll tell you why. Something happened to me as a kid, but I hate rats. Now, there's advantage of being
29:27 your own boss. You tell the staff, "Get rid of rat. Get rid of rat." There are all my years in my office 10 years, I
29:34 never never once got rid of red. I got my staff to get rid of it. I think on Friday, my staff got fed up.
29:40 imply to you talks you talk so many way like you don't bother because you never get rid of it well so I paused you know
29:48 I said you know what I can't be giving a sermon on Sunday about fear and anxiety
29:56 if I don't get rid of the rat and so I prayed and I'm telling you I
30:01 hate red cotisol was coming up then I told myself the Lord is with me
30:08 I'm telling you is and I prayed. I said, "Lord, I will overcome my fear." So I told my staff, I go to get rid of the
30:14 red. The staff said, "Huh? 10 years you have ever done it. You'll do it." And so I went and I took out the box. The
30:22 fellow jumped. He still took out. I was going and I walked out of my office and
30:29 thought they got Oh, yellow. And I walk and I walk the cow and p I I
30:35 kept having the thing the fellow was going to jump out and I brought him to the padang and I took him out
30:43 and after he went out I felt joy.
30:50 joy. I'm telling you because
30:56 the Lord was with me and I overcame my fear.
31:02 And I think the Lord taught me a lesson that day. You face your anxieties in a controlled
31:09 environment. Again, that's clinical signs, you know. So God gave me a small mouse
31:18 and next time God's going to give me a bigger rat. But I think that's what you mean because
31:23 if you can do that, you can carry your cross. So let me ask a question in relation to this
31:30 question. Should you take a more stressful job? And you tell me what the answer is. A yes, I need the money. It
31:37 means I can't be involved in church. It's a loaded question. No, I will honor God to provide a less stressful job. I'm
31:44 really quite stressed at church because church will stress you out. Everyone knows that.
31:49 The answer is both answers are wrong. The first one puts God on the back
31:56 burner. The second one means you cannot face discomfort.
32:03 And can I be very honest? There are quite a few people who come and work in church environments and NOS's because
32:11 they cannot take the real world out there. But if it's anything you learn about
32:17 disciplehip, you face your fears. You face your fears. Why? Because the
32:24 Lord is with you. You cultivate a gentle spirit. And God in his mercy will pump
32:31 out so much oxytocin in you. Your heart will be better.
32:37 Your digestion will be better. Your mind will think better.
32:44 And generally he will supply all the means to help you through this. And this
32:50 is really to me groundbreaking. So what is your attitude when you face stress? An attitude of courage and
32:56 comfort in godly rejoicing. Let's go to the second one. How does praying help you face stress? I'm going to break down
33:03 the prayer for you. Now the prayer has three parts. Let's look at the grammar.
33:08 You find do not be anxious about anything. That's the first part. But so
33:14 don't be anxious. But then we have this thing about prayer. In every sitation by
33:19 prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And then you have the word and. So don't do this
33:26 anxious but pray and the peace of God will come. That's the way you understand
33:31 the text. But let's break down a bit of the grammar. You see this is quite interesting the way is broken. Look at
33:38 it. Do not be anxious by anything but in every situation. The NRV older version
33:45 has a better translation. There's a play on words. But do not be anxious by
33:50 anything but in everything. Now here's the key. The key is your
33:56 prayer life. Do you pray with thanksgiving all the time? What does David says?
34:04 Evening and morning, morning, afternoon, and evening,
34:10 something like that. Do I cry out to you all the time? And with thanksgiving,
34:16 when you see the word thanksgiving, it means by faith, you have already appropriated that prayer. God has
34:24 answered that prayer. You are thankful. Meaning, if you have the habit of only
34:29 coming to God and really praying, we under stress, he will not answer that prayer
34:36 because it's a prayer of disobedience. But if prayer is so in your bloodstream,
34:44 in your life, in every situation, small and big, you pray,
34:51 God will answer. And if you accept that with thanksgiving, now here's the other
34:56 thing that reinforces that thinking because he separates prayer and petition.
35:03 Petition is where you come to God says, "God, I'm sick. My son is sick. I have a lawsuit. God, I'm very worried. That's
35:10 the petition. But there's prayer. He separated it. That prayer is where you
35:15 pray what you pray firstly by this. How should you always start your prayers?
35:20 Remember the earlier verse is I rejoice greatly in the Lord. And again I say rejoice. That's what that's called
35:28 praise. That's called adoration.
35:33 That's called hallowing God's name. So you want to have peace,
35:40 you praise God. Peace on earth. That's what we see in the Matthew text. But
35:46 first, the angels glorify God. Glorify God, then there's peace. You don't
35:52 glorify God, no peace. Very important. If your prayer life is marked by
35:59 glorifying God, praising God all the time, praise you God, peace comes. If
36:06 your prayer life every day
36:13 stress, stress, stress, that's the way the prayer is structured.
36:20 And then how do you break it down? He says two things which is quite interesting. He says the peace of God
36:26 which transcends all understanding. Now what it means is simply this. The
36:31 opposite of stress is not just peace. The opposite of stress in the Bible is a
36:40 peace which people don't understand. That's very important because what we
36:46 all want when we pray, if we are very honest with oursel is we want God to remove that problem.
36:54 Isn't that right? But if God, if Paul can be a man that
36:60 can rejoice when he's going to die, rejoice when people defame him, rejoice
37:06 when there are false prophets, rejoice when there's fights, when the Hebrews can rejoice when their property is taken
37:13 away. You think anybody prays for their property to be taken away?
37:19 It mean it is a prayer so thankful to God that it says God that even though
37:27 the waters envelope me I will praise your name and that's why
37:34 the world says you're crazy because it's a peace that despite your
37:39 circumstances you rise up and you do not do that overnight you do
37:47 that by Two things. One, a regular practice of prayer. So how do you
37:55 minimize the stress? Very simple. Pray every day all the time. Pray in your
38:01 car. Pray before you go for meeting. Pray, pray, pray every time. Just pray
38:08 and talk. And as you pray, the Lord is near. And one day when the bad days
38:14 come, you are so imbued with God. He will give you that peace that surpasses
38:21 all understanding. That's the first point. Here's the second point. He uses the word guard your hearts and mind. The
38:28 Greek here is military guarding. You know, but guarding from what? And then
38:33 he says the word in Christ Jesus, which appears again all over the book of
38:39 Philippians. So here two things. Why guard? Guard your heart. We can
38:45 understand why because
38:51 why guard your mind? Because wow the mind can imagine every scenario.
38:59 Simple example. You remember when you were a kid and mom and dad said, you know, I'm going to go out and come back
39:05 in 1 hour. And mom and dad didn't come back in 1 hour. What were you thinking? You were
39:11 thinking all sorts of things, right? Because somebody is whispering in your
39:18 ear and saying all sorts of things. What if this happens? What if that happens?
39:26 What if the devil is whispering many things and making you more anxious?
39:34 And so God gives us a spirit to guard. But how do you guard when you see the
39:39 word in Christ Jesus? Go back and read those verses. You guard it together
39:47 because all those verses will tell you is communal. Here's the second way you
39:53 get rid of stress. Intercessory prayer. So here's one thing I challenge you all.
40:01 When was the last time you got someone to pray over your stressful issues?
40:06 And I say this especially with men because men
40:11 do not like to tell their problems. They bottle it inside.
40:16 Now I say this in love. Every Sunday we stand here and we avail ourselves for
40:22 prayer to pray over you. We don't do that for ego.
40:29 But how many do come and I think me yian all of us we will
40:34 continue to do this because it's the role of a shepherd and we will stand here even though nobody comes but you
40:40 got to ask yourself this question you know if you have never been prayed over
40:46 by anyone how is your heart and especially your mind guarded
40:53 and you know when you bottle it inside what happens cortisol increases
40:58 you get snappy, your thinking gets bad and all of things happen. So, I'm going
41:04 to challenge you this morning because if you're going to talk about prayer, why am I giving you this m this
41:10 pre-warningh? Because end of this sermon, we're going to pray. I'm going to encourage you to just cry out to God.
41:18 We're going to do later on with the music some time of intercessory prayer and ask God to break any strongholds of
41:25 anxiety. So how does praying help you face stress? Very simple answer. Because
41:32 stress is spiritual warfare and prayer is your victory.
41:39 Prayer is your victory. And the last one, why does your everyday
41:46 thinking affect your stress? And we find just now brother David read this verse.
41:52 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely,
41:59 admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.
42:04 Now, how it is connected to the earlier verse? Because of verse 9, after seeing
42:11 this, Paul says, well, let's mentor this. That means not just you thinking it. Learn it from others. Whatever you
42:18 learn or receive or heard from me, that's verse eight is mentored. sin in me put into practice and here the key
42:24 verse and the God of peace will be with you and there's a God of peace and verse
42:29 seven there's a peace of God so obviously the two are tied peace of god comes from the god of peace it's all one
42:35 big section so here is the final thing about stress
42:41 management happens moment by moment second by second hour by hour day by day
42:49 what you are doing sitting there right now is stress management. Let me explain this. Uh there was a very famous book by
42:57 a man called Aldors Huxley called Brave New World. Uh those of you who read this
43:03 literature is what you call dystopian literature. Meaning it's about a is about a future of a certain kind. And in
43:10 this future everybody's on drugs. Take soma, be happy. Not only you take
43:16 drugs, the drugs is encouraged to be taken. And he had an interesting verse. He says the drug is Christianity without
43:23 tears. Meaning, I'm going to give you all the euphoria of religion minus the
43:28 responsibility of it. You know, all this praise and worship and love and forgiveness and kindness, I'm going to
43:35 give it to you. All this pain and suffering and not doing sin, all those stuff that don't bring people to church,
43:41 we're going to remove it. We're going to cut it all out. We're going to pack the church. And in this world,
43:48 everything's allowed. It is a completely promiscuous society.
43:54 Your body belongs to the other person. Drugs are allowed. Free sex is allowed. You can think
44:01 anything you want, do anything you want, and they will control it to make sure your health is managed. Wow. To a lot of
44:08 people, that's paradise, you know. But you know what it is? Is actually hell.
44:16 You see, he picked on something very, very profound. And this is what he says. The perfect dictatorship will have the
44:23 appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in
44:29 which the prisoners will not even dream of escaping. It will essentially be a system of
44:36 slavery through consumption and entertainment. The slaves will love
44:43 their servitudes. You can almost hear Romans 7, the things
44:49 I do not do, I do.
44:55 And we live in this age. Because nowadays, you open your
45:01 computer, you can see anything you want. Just a fingertip away any website. You
45:09 can go out there and buy anything you want, think anything you want. Let me
45:15 tell you your number one stressor. We must know our stresses. And what this is
45:22 telling you is that if I'm going to poison a person, I wrap it around candy
45:27 so that you don't know it's poison and I feed it to you every day because you get
45:32 used to it. Then I kill you so slowly. The Bible has a simpler word for it. is
45:38 simply called bondage. Let me tell you the number one stressor all of you have.
45:43 And some of you may even be doing it this morning and you're stressed right now because you don't realize it. Do you
45:49 know what's the number one stressor in society? This thing.
45:56 the number of time you spend looking down
46:01 instead of looking up to God. You track in one day amount of time you spend on
46:06 Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email, WhatsApp and downloading all those
46:14 stupid videos people send you. I'm seriously now what you don't realize
46:21 is that if every day you do that you know like food what is all of that that's actually junk
46:27 you know if every day you eat McDonald's
46:33 guess what happens to you after a year you become junk
46:38 if every day you fill your mind with junk guess what happens when you get a letter
46:45 to say you got cancer Because your mind had been fed on junk,
46:52 you will break. Stress management is not something you
46:58 do just before you get a stress. It's a daytoday, moment to moment, second by second
47:04 thing. If you like to spend the time behind the church there playing with headphone, the church is not going to
47:10 come to you and hit you or spank you. But you are killing yourself because you're saying church is boring. I sit at
47:17 back, I play my headphone and the day will come you will regret it.
47:24 You know like I used to like to watch some kind of movies. They are not bad movies but
47:31 they're very black. You know men there are a lot lot of genre out there which is very they play
47:38 on the mind. Some women love to watch Korean soap operas.
47:43 Can you imagine going on a binge of that? Do you know what it does to your brain? It fries your mind. You know,
47:50 so I learned one thing. Who I mix with, what I see, what I hear,
47:58 what I do every day, that affects my stress. And so God in
48:04 his goodness tells you this first. The works of Rick Warren, the battle with
48:10 stress in your life is going on between your years. What you fill your mind with determines your level of stress. And
48:17 Paul put it more. Whatever is true. And sometimes speaking the truth is very
48:23 difficult because we like to believe lies. And so he then adds it true is not
48:28 enough. It must be noble because sometimes when the truth comes out is destructive. So let's build one another
48:34 up. Whatever is right is justice. It must be pure, lovely, admirable,
48:44 excellent, praiseworthy. Here's some simple things I've been
48:51 doing in my life. The last two months, me and my wife got rid of our TV.
48:59 We got rid of our TV. Ever since we moved to a new place, not
49:04 because we intended to but we we just never got it back and two
49:10 months has passed. I haven't watched TV. I actually think my life is better.
49:16 I learn now to do something. It's called a prayer exam. And every day I thank God for three things.
49:24 And then I learn to hang around people that don't stress me. That's quite important.
49:30 I'm telling you is it's the simple little things you do that changes. I'm
49:36 not saying you shouldn't you should love everybody but make a point to hang around people that edify you. You know
49:42 what it did to me? Because my my my character is very kjang one. It slowed
49:47 me down. And when it slowed me down, I begin to see things better.
49:54 And when I began to see things better, I begin to see problems better.
49:59 And I then realized there was a verse in the Bible that said the same things. One
50:04 of the other very famous verses about stress is found in Matthew. Do not worry
50:10 about what you eat or you drink. We all know that verse. But you know what Jesus says after that? He says consider what
50:18 the liies of the field. Meaning the moment I slow down and I I
50:24 begin to take that literally and I look at the lily,
50:29 I see beauty. I see God's hands.
50:36 I become calm. I think praiseworthy things
50:42 and I'm grounded. And so when I go back to my problem, whatever that problem is,
50:49 my mind is in a better state to face it. There is this exercise psychologist tell
50:56 you, what you see, what you smell, you hear, you feel. And I tell you is
51:02 Matthew 6. And I'll tell you, the more I read, I see so much in clinical
51:07 psychology which fits the Bible. The next talk I give you, I'm going to tell you about dopamine and serotonin. And
51:14 you find so many things they tell you about addiction is found right off the book of Romans.
51:21 So there's some truth. Pause, slow down, switch off your headphone.
51:29 Don't fill your mind with rubbish. Every day, play some praise music.
51:36 Read your Bible a bit more. Thank somebody, cuddle your wife, encourage
51:43 your kid. And as you do that daily, more and more,
51:48 the Lord becomes near. You'll be gentler
51:54 and you find stress is easier to handle. So, I'm going to end. Why does your
52:00 everyday thinking affects your stress? Because excellent praiseworthy thoughts
52:06 builds up stress resilience. I'm going to end with one example. This is a very famous doctor Abraham Burgus. He's a
52:13 utopian doctor became a novelist. He he did a TED talk
52:19 which went viral and he talked about the need for human connection. And he's very into spending time with
52:26 people, the need for relational talks. And he talked about one case where somebody had AIDS that's very stressful.
52:34 And this guy was about to die. And uh I I got the transcript out and he said this. It is the end of the TED talk. You
52:40 can get it online. I can send you the link. And I wanted to read you this is worse. This one closing passage about
52:46 one patient. I recall one patient who was at a point no more than a skeleton encased in shrinking skin unable to
52:54 speak. His mouth crusted with candida. There was resistance to the usual medications. When he saw me on what
53:01 turned out to be his last hours on this earth, his hands moved as if in slow motion. And as I wondered what he was up
53:07 to, his thick fingers made their ways up to his pajama shirt, fumbling with his buttons. I realized that he was wanting
53:13 to expose his wicker basket chest to me. It was an offering and invitation. I did
53:19 not decline. So the story goes, he examined a patient knowing that he was
53:24 going to die. But it was the last part of this which struck me. He said this in
53:29 the closing to this story, this sad story and after that the man died. He said this and the message which I didn't
53:35 fully understand then even as I delivered it and which I understand better now is this and hear these wordsh
53:43 I will always be there. I will see you through this. I will never abandon you.
53:50 I will be with you through the end. I read this again. And he reminded me
53:57 about the Bible. And as you look at the great commission, the most famous
54:02 verses, the mandate for the church, we always hear these verses, but we miss
54:08 out the second part of verse 20. What's the second part? And surely
54:15 I am with you always to the very end of
54:21 the age. The Lord is near.
54:26 Let us pray. God, we want invite the prayer the worship team to come and Lord, we just
54:32 come before you and we ask for those in our midst who just struggle with stress. So Lord, we ask that they learn to to
54:41 change their thinking. For it's our attitude towards stress that will kill us, not stress. And if the saints of all
54:49 could rejoice when their possessions were taken, if the saints of all could rejoice when
54:55 they were suffering, if the saints of all could pick up the cross
55:01 and rejoice and became more resilient, what more does it say of us? So we pray
55:09 this morning for all who are just going through struggles, health,
55:15 legal, emotional, that they take courage and they take
55:21 comfort in rejoicing in you. That our joy is made perfected by the
55:27 cross. And as the Hebrew writer say, we fix our eyes on Christ, oh Lord.
55:36 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus who for the joy set before him. For the joy set
55:42 before him endured the cross. So Lord, we will not go through life as victims.
55:49 We will not go through lives feeling sorry for ourselves. We will not go through lives
55:56 feeling down and dejected. We will rise. We will rise and we will defile say in
56:04 the face of all our troubles. I will rejoice again. I say I will rejoice. And Lord,
56:13 as we quieten down our hearts, we come before you in prayer as you just work a miracle in our bodies both spiritually
56:20 and biologically. And we offer praise to you in our prayers, oh Lord. And that
56:25 the peace of God that surpasses all understanding fills us, oh Lord. and you guard our hearts and our minds
56:32 against the devil who will whisper things in our in our our ears. And Lord,
56:38 finally we ask for everything we we do daily with our handphones, our computers, what
56:44 we watch, what we see, what we hear. And we ask, we focus ourselves on what
56:51 is true, what is noble, what is right,
56:56 on all these things that are praiseworthy. We fill our minds with things that are not negative. We fill
57:03 our things with the things of God and Lord, we become stronger
57:09 and you do a work in us and suddenly our problems become
57:15 momentary. And right now as as the music plays, I just like to ask that be the promise that be on you if you struggle.
57:24 And lastly, I'm going to just encourage you this at the end. end of this service, would you come in
57:31 front to receive prayer? The elders and the pastors in front are going to encourage all the pastors, the elders,
57:37 just stand in front. Do not bottle it inside. And let us intercede for you.
57:44 Let us make you, oh Lord, our hiding place. Let us sing this song. You are my
57:50 hiding place. And we ask that we don't need to hide within ourselves. Shall we rise?
57:56 We can hide in God. Let us let him fill our heart with songs.
58:03 [Music] Let's sing this as Sister Jita and let God minister to us.
58:11 [Music]
