©1999 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

5/30/99 The Point Of Focus Philippians 4:8

5/30/99 Phil. 4:8 THE POINT OF FOCUS

Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

I think perhaps it would be impossible
      for me to overstate
            the value of the concept
                  we are going to look at this morning.

I mentioned to you last week
      that the verse we will be studying
            during the next few minutes
                  is the verse that initially gave me
                        the desire to teach Philippians.

There have been times
      during the 58 weeks we have spent in this book so far
            when I have wanted to spring ahead to this verse and scream,
            "Look at this! Just look at this!"

Now that we are finally here
      I do hope I can help us
            appreciate a little of what's happening here
                  and even more
                        to appreciate the tremendous value it can be to us in real life.

As most of you know by now,
      the passage we are studying
            in the 4th chapter of Philippians
                  is a passage in which
Paul is offering us a concise statement
      of the survival tools for hard times
            he has been presenting throughout
                  all four chapters of this short New Testament letter.

And we have been in this study long enough
      so that you also know that
            this book was not written
                  for the cozy, quiet Sunday afternoons of our lives.

This is in-the-trenches stuff.

This is Paul is prison
      writing to Christians under persecution.

This is God's people dealing with "REAL LIFE" at its most REAL.

I know I've restated that truth
      again and again throughout this study,
            and I want you to know I have done so for a purpose.

You see, I know the kind of lies
      Satan uses against us
            to attempt to destroy the power
                  of the truths we've been studying.
And I know that at the head of the list
      is the lie that what Paul says here
            is fine for the good times in our lives,
but it doesn't work for pain.

Satan will seek to tell us that
      "Rejoicing in the Lord"
            and knowing "The Lord is near"
                  is fine for those times
when things go our way,
      and we feel His presence with us,
but it just doesn't work
      when we see things falling apart around us.

But the truth is
      it's exactly the opposite.
What Paul shares with us here
      was written specifically for
            the hardest times in our lives,
the times when we feel like
      we are the victims of evil forces we cannot escape
            and cannot control.

There may be no more terrifying feeling
      than the feeling of being out of control.

We talked a little bit about this last week.

If you were with us
      you know we were studying Paul's instructions to us to:
Phil. 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And as we were studying that verse
      I mentioned that every time we pray
            we are affirming the fundamental truth of our lives,
                  that though we may feel like we have no control over our situation,
      we have a God who does have control,
            a God who holds our lives
                  and our futures in His hands.

And when Paul assured us that:
Phil. 4:7... the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus...
      we saw that peace coming
            from the assurance that our God
                  truly does hold that over-arching control of our lives.

But that is not where Paul ends.
      In fact, to stop where we stopped last week
            without continuing on to verse 8
                  would leave us in intense frustration.

You see, we are by design
      creatures of action.
If we are to remain mentally and emotionally healthy and stable
      we must have a point of mental focus.

Now, left to ourselves,
      apart from the presence and guidance
            of Christ in our lives,
when the pain hits,
      when the hard times come,
            when the evil intrudes into our lives,
the point of focus we will select
      is that of attempting to fight against
            and destroy the person
                  or the people
                        we believe to be responsible for our pain.

Now there is no sense in us going through this study
      unless we're going to make it practical,
            so we might as well start right here.

I was in a phone conversation recently
      with lady who does not attend our church,
            and is not involved in it,
but who had gotten a hold of my name
      and wanted my advice.

She'd recently gone through
      a painful divorce
            and was consumed with frustration
                  over some ongoing issues
                        between herself and her former mate.
There were children involved
      which greatly compounded the problem.

Do you know where her point of focus was?
      On her exhusband.

Do you know what she was looking for?
      Advice on how she could get him to do
            the things she wanted him to do.

EX. At least three times in my life
      I have had employers
            who, from my perspective,
                  severely misused me.

There were periods in my involvement with all three of them
      when my anger against their injustice
            became the point of focus of my life.

I found myself consumed with a longing
      to find some way
            to fight back
                  or get even...in a nice Christian sort of way.

EX. If you want help in making this personal,
      just ask yourself, "When was the last time I felt as if I was the victim
            of someone else's sin,
                  or someone else's failure?"

When was the last time
      you saw yourself as a victim
            of the evil in someone else's life?

EX. Do you think Paul didn't really understand?
      Do you remember why Paul was forced to appeal to Caesar,
            why he'd been forced to spend
                  months prior to the writing of this letter locked in prison,
      why, at the most crucial time in the history of the church
            the man who understood more
                  about the true nature of the church
                        than any one else in history ever would
      was suddenly yanked out of the battle
            and forced to sit on the sidelines?
It was because some petty,
      vicious little Jewish leaders in Jerusalem
            hated him so much
                  they told lies about him,
                        forcing his arrest.

Now, let me tell you what you already know.

Whenever we find ourselves
      feeling like the victim of someone else's evil
            our natural response is to attempt to gain control over the person causing that pain
                  with the hope that we can somehow
                        defeat them.

And when we enter into that arena
      and choose to fight against them
            let me share with you two things
                  we will always accomplish
                        no matter how the battle itself turns out.

#1. We choose to give the person we are fighting against tremendous power over our lives.

"No way, Larry!
      It's because they already have power that I'm fighting against them. The whole purpose of the battle
      is to attempt to break free
            from the power they have over me.
The last thing in the world I would ever do
      is give them more power over me."

Well, I hate to be the one to break the news to you,
      but when you fight against them
            that is exactly what you do -
you give them power in your life.

How much time do you spend
      engaging them in mental warfare?

I'm talking about what's going on in your mind
      when they aren't even in your presence.

How much intense mental energy
      do you invest in thinking
            and rethinking
                  and rethinking again
what happened
      and why it happened
            and what they said
                  and what you wish you would have said?

How much emotional energy
      have you exhausted
            every time you reenter that battle emotionally?

Every time you do that
      you are saying to the one you're fighting against,
      "Here! Not only do you have power over my circumstances,
      but I also want to give you power
            over my mind and my emotions.
It's yours for the taking.
      Here - I give you another full hour of my life,
            another afternoon,
                  another sleepless night."

And we need to be brutally honest with ourselves here -
      that is not power they have any right to,
            it is power we have freely chosen to give them.
They didn't take that hour,
      or that afternoon,
            or that night from us by force,
they didn't demand and receive
      all that mental and emotional energy.
We volunteered it,
      we gave it to them freely,
            by our own choice.

So the first thing that happens
      when we determine to seek to defeat
            the person who has done evil to us
                  is that we choose to give them power over our lives.

#2. And then, second,
      we invite the spirit of bitterness
            to take up residence within us.
And once bitterness is allowed to take root
      and begin to grow
            it will become an all-consuming obsession.

It will become the point of focus of our life.
      It will become the theme
            of every significant conversation we have.
It will become the center
      of our reasoning processes
            and it will suck our emotional energy dry.

And right now
      there are some of you hearing these words
            who know what I'm talking about
                  and you're saying to yourself,
"Yes, Larry, but you don't know what they did to me!
      You don't know how they treated me!
            You don't know how their evil has ruined my life."

And obviously, I don't know what they did.
      But I would respond with some other questions.
How many hours,
      how many days of your life
            have you invested in your bitterness,
days that could have been invested
      in bringing so much good,
            so much healing into your world?
How many other people
      have been defiled by your bitterness?
How many others have also been forced
      to process the evil that touched your life?

All I'm saying is this:
      when we choose to place our focus
            on seeking to destroy those
                  who brought evil into our lives
we are choosing to give them power over us that they have no right to,
      and we choose to invite a spirit of bitterness
            to take root within us.

So what's the alternative?
      What's the solution?

Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

"Right, Larry! And Pollyanna lived happily ever after!"

No, but Paul did thrive in prison.
      And God's people can find true freedom
            over the evil that seeks to consume our lives.

And in order to understand what's happening here
      I need to take us back
            to a phrase I've used several times this morning.

It's the phrase, "Point of focus."

God has designed the human mind
      in such a way that we can only consciously focus on one thing at a time.

More than that,
      the mind is constantly in search of some point of focus.

Contrary to what we may believe
      from the blank stare on some folks' faces at times,
            the mind is always focused somewhere.

EX. Right now there are some of you here who by all appearances
      seem to be mentally in "Park",
            but the truth is five minutes ago
                  your mind started thinking about
                        all the things you're going to need to get together
      for that fishing trip this afternoon
            and in reality your mind is a buzzing little beehive of energetic activity.

And whatever we choose to focus on
      will determine where
            both our reasoning processes
                  and our emotions end up moving.

But the mind can only focus on one thing at a time - it's the way we're wired.

EX. A number of years ago
      I had a friend who was going through
            a very painful time in life.

I could do nothing to remove the cause of the pain,
      but I gave them a prescription -
            I suggested they get a puzzle
                  and begin putting it together.

You know something? It helped.
      It helped because it provided times of intense concentration that provided a kind of mental reprieve
            while God's healing process
                  was taking place within them.

Now, with all of that as preparation,      
      let me tell you what I see happening
            in this verse here in Philippians.
Knowing our strong vulnerability
      during those times when evil has intruded into our lives
            to be pulled into attempting to lash out and destroy
                  those who brought that evil to us,
Paul offers us his final great weapon
      for survival and success
            during the hard times in our lives.

He calls us to an active,
      aggressive mental warfare,
            a warfare in which
rather than allowing our mental energies
      to be lead by our emotional responses
            to the evil that has touched our lives,
we actively choose to search through
      our life and our circumstances
            until we see something true,                   something honorable,
                        something right,
                              something lovely,
                                    something of good repute,
                                          something excellent,
something worthy of praise,
      in other words,
            something that reflects the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ with us,
      something that reminds us
            of the true nature of our God,
and we consciously choose
      to focus on it
            and then Paul uses
                  an important word -
he uses the word "DWELL".

He says let your mind dwell on these things.

You see,
      we cannot eliminate negative thinking
            by telling ourselves not to think negatively.

The only way we can ever eliminate negative thinking
      is by choosing to refocus our minds
            on something positive.

EX. I saw a beautiful example of this principle
      in a little news blurb
            following those devastating tornados in Oklahoma a few weeks ago.

The reporter had his microphone
      shoved in the face of a family
            who was standing in a pile of absolute rubble,
      rubble that just a day before
            had been their home.
He was trying to get them to give their response to the devastation around them.

And the father responded by saying,
      "We're just so thankful to God
            because our whole family is safe."

The point focus...

Paul, of course, illustrated the principle repeatedly throughout this letter.

Phil. 1:12 ¶ Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel,
Phil. 1:13 so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else,
Phil. 1:14 and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

There are times in the lives of some of God's people
      when there doesn't seem to be
            a lot to work with in the way of good in the circumstances surrounding them.

It may be that
      sometimes the only point of focus we can find
            is the presence of our Lord with us,
                  and His promise that He will never leave us,
      and never forsake us,
            and His assurance that we will find Him adequate for each day we go through.

And if that's all we can find,
      then that's what we are called to focus on.

Let me conclude by saying this as plainly as I know how -

every one of us will hit points in our lives
      when evil blasts in.

At those times we are faced with a choice
      that will ultimately determine
            the course and quality of our lives
                  for years to come.

We can choose to declare war
      on the source of that evil,
            giving our minds and emotions over to that battle,
      and embark upon a road
            that will form us into bitter, hate-filled people,
                  who poison the quality of everyone's life we get near.

Our cause may be just.
      The evil that touched us may be real.
            But our response to it
ultimately multiplies the impact of that evil upon our world
      a hundred fold.

Or we can choose
      to actively seek within our world
            those things that reflect our Lord,
and then, when we find them,
      choose to focus on them,
            to dwell on them,
                  and allow them to become the dominant theme of our lives.

Any bitter fool
      can see the evil in his world,
but only the Spirit of God
      can give us eyes to see His presence in the midst of it
            and can give us the faith
                  and the courage
                        to allow Him to reshape that evil
                              into true,
                                    eternal,
                                          contagious good in our lives.