Growing In Grace

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Today, we're finishing up the new normal. What do you need to know in 2022 and moving forward? And I'll tell you, the focus today is going to be in Philippians 4, and Paul's not going to say what you need to do is keep up with the politics going on in your day and age, because that'll tell you what you need to know. Social media won't do it either, nor the cultural trends as you see them shifting time and again. So let's read now what Paul says in Philippians 4-9 and what he has to say about the new normal. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious 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 minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. So far our text, I think this is a good summary for the new normal. Paul is not talking as much about what you need to know in terms of information as how you need to think, what you need to focus on, how you need to perceive the world, and how you need to set yourself up for the future. And his words in his day and age fit very well in our day and age. By the way, his day and age was an age actually of a lot of pessimism. The Mediterranean world was not known for its optimism and can-do spirit. In fact, I think it was Gregory Blomquist, I have a quote here from an academic journal in which he wrote, the Mediterranean antiquity was marked by a profound pessimism concerning life. We should not be surprised that in antiquity joy is rarely mentioned except as an illusion. Isn't that interesting? It's just a fleeting illusion. This is true for the philosopher and the elites. It is much more so for the vast populace, which had no opportunity for philosophical or scientific reflection. They knew in their experience of life that their religion was a religion of festival. With an ethical component that aroused anxieties it could not allay because it was not a soteriological religion that could reassure the faithful by organizing their lives in this world on the pretext of securing salvation in the next. Okay, I know, what in the world is he talking about? Like I said, I think 2000 years later, we're back in the Mediterranean world of antiquity. We have a lot of pessimism going on. And it's maybe more pronounced because of COVID, but this was going on well before COVID as well. In fact, few people and few younger people are looking at the future in terms of, wow, it's going to be great. It's going to be bright. It's going to be wonderful. The world is going in the right direction. Most of us don't feel that way these days. And there have been, as you've noticed, I don't know, this generation, the younger generations, have grown up on more dystopian novels, from Hunger Games to whatever, than any other generation before that's turned into movies and basically set the tone. We expect a dystopian future now. And by the way, our religion today is escapism, that festival idea that he talked about. In other words, even within Christianity, I've seen this, where the real religion that many people are into is just getting the, having the experience, the concert, the going to church and being pumped up. And it's just trying to get pumped up week after week after week, with a lot of letdowns to reality during the week. And it's almost like Sunday morning and Monday morning are totally opposite experiences. And the two don't meet at all. And then, if you are not Christian or religious, you still, quote, are following, quote, religion, in the sense of all you're doing is celebrating to forget about reality. You're escaping, whether it's on the weekend to party away or on vacation or whatever. It's just getting away temporarily, numbing yourself in one form or another to avoid the pessimism of life. OK, I think his day and age, Paul's day and age in the first century in our day and age are way too similar. And it is in that context. He wrote our words and he basically is telling Christians throughout this. The first church actually in Europe, Philippi, he's telling them throughout this, you can shine like stars in the dark night sky. He uses that actually in Philippians, that analogy. We are to be so different. It's so obvious we stand out as a star in the dark night sky. And that is our what we need to know and how we need to live in our new normal. So we're going to learn fr...