Paul's Think Tank: final instructions

Last of a series on Philippians 4:8.


An older neighbor who is battling renal failure and other
complications of diabetes gave us this orchid with a
note to "remember me by it." She gave specific
instructions of how to keep it blooming for years. I thought
this plant was the best way to finish illustrating
Paul's counsel to counter anxiety and worry  with thoughts of
God's love and wonderful future for believers!

When I was sick with pneumonia this spring, I was ready for any advice the doctor could give. He knew best: a powerful prescription and a strong cough syrup to better control my “cough-your-insides-out” hack. As I write this, a week after the worst of the illness, I’m grateful for the medical care available to me. As I’ve been thinking and writing about Philippians 4:8, I’ve come to see it as a “prescription” for the germs of anxiety and unbelief that can infect Christians and leave them miserable.

Paul knew the best medicine: to keep your eyes on Jesus. Paul suggested practicing this by rejoicing in all things, seeking to be gentle rather than troubled or harsh, and praying with thanksgiving. Then he added a second “medicine” for fear and anxiety: to get your eyes on the skies, thinking less about troubles and more about the praiseworthy attributes and works of God. And so the “think on” list--certainly not complete, but a good start for realigning our spiritual focus: true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

In considering what this looks like in real-life, I quickly thought of someone who has every reason to complain. A teenage diving accident broke her neck, leaving Joni Eareckson Tada paralyzed from the neck down. Today she’s known as a best-selling author, respected mouth-artist, and active advocate for the disabled. But fifty years of paralysis has taken its toll, and she suffers with chronic and often excruciating pain. In an interview with Today’s Christian Woman (Nov. 21, 2015), Joni was asked what helps when she’s in pain and unable to do anything about it.  Her answer: she asks her caregivers to pray for her, and she sings or quotes a scripture over and over in her head. She especially likes hymns because the tunes stick in her mind and heart through the day. At the time of the interview, the second stanza to “Be Still My Soul” especially helped her “think on” the right things:

Be still, my soul, Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul, the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Not until Heaven will we know a perfect world. But that doesn’t diminish God’s power or trustworthiness when life’s problems leave us frustrated, fearful, or anxious. Swedish hymnist Lina Sandell Berg, who helplessly watched her pastor-father drown when he fell off a boat in a storm, knew what it was like to trust God in unimaginably difficult circumstances. In one of her better-known children’s hymns, she expressed the challenge we all face: to trust God in whatever comes:

Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children server;
Unto them His grace He showeth, and their sorrows all He knoweth.

Reject anxiety. Think on these things.  Praise God for all that He is!

Think tank: "any praise"

The "flowers" of hydrangea are actually the "bracts" or stem ends. They
seem to explode with praise for their Creator!

A series on Philippians 4:8.
In her book Calm My Anxious Heart, Linda Dillow tells the story of a military wife whose romantic notions of living overseas were soon cloyed by the language barrier, loneliness, and everything strange about another culture. She was done, done, done—and ready to move home to Mama.  Then Mama faxed her just two lines:
Two women looked through prison bars;
One saw mud, the other saw stars. --(NavPress, 1998/2007, p. 29)
Through that little couplet, the wise Mama reminded her pouty daughter that we make choices about how to look at life, even when we feel imprisoned by our circumstances. The view out the window is either mud or stars…our choice.

I think that’s part of what Paul was getting at as he wound up his list about “things to think about” as antidotes to sinful anxiety and worry. When the “negs” nag on us, we can choose to turn from them and find things worthy of praise. 

The whole marvelous plan of salvation should be at the top of our lists of things “worthy of praise.”  We have a God who:

*will never leave us nor reject us.
*calls us His beloved.
*has a plan for our lives.
*helps, not hinders us.
*can transform disappointments to joy.

 “The older we get,” wrote Charles Stanley in How to Reach Your Full Potential For God (Nelson, 2009, p. 29), most of us can look back at our lives and see how God’s purposes have unfolded over time.  If you and I have chosen to obey and live in right relationship with Him, we can look back and say, ‘I have done things I never would have thought I was capable of doing or would do.  I have things that I have never thought I would have.  I have achieved things I never dreamed of achieving.'”

 

His comment made me think of Paul’s declaration, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  And where is that? In Philippians 4:13, just a few verses past his lengthy list of “think on these things.” For when we retune our minds to Christ’s thinking patterns, God has a slate on which to write amazing life stories.

Anything worthy of praise in your life?  Feel free to bless the rest of us with a comment in the reply section.

 

Next: final instructions.

Think tank: "lovely"

Part of a series on Philippians 4:8.
What can be lovelier than a rose? I write this from my recliner within sight of a “get-well” bouquet of orange roses my husband gave me.  He watched me cough and struggle for breath for more than week, and finally took me to the clinic where I was diagnosed with pneumonia  and given a powerful prescription to fight it. How grateful I am for the hope of a “cure” in modern medicine. 

I never tire of watching roses as they unfold in sublime beauty. We have more than a dozen bushes ablaze with single-stem roses in our front yard.  Plus we have a rose hedge dotted with dozens of pink blooms.  Our rose garden, besides bringing beauty to our home, allows us to pick bouquets to communicate “congratulations” or “we care” to people in our lives.  This grace of “sharing” reminds me of an etched-in-stone message in the arboretum at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.  Amidst the splattered shadows of its pathways is a stone bench with this carved message: “The fragrance remains in the hand that gave the rose.”  In poetic brevity it reminds me of the truth that whenever I touch or serve someone in the name of Christ, I am blessed, too.

So whenever I am reminded through Philippians 4:8 to think about things that are “lovely,” I once again am taken to the life of Christ.  Someday I will see His face, and I am sure it will be so pure, compassionate and lovely that I can barely contain myself with amazement and appreciation.

Our culture defines loveliness as a composite of features considered beautiful, painted, poufed or cut into culturally pleasing combinations. The beauty industry is huge.  Little girls watch the “Miss America” pageant wanting to look like those young women.  (Hey, I did!) Or they adore the doe-eyed Disney cartoon princesses. But the Bible’s definition of “lovely” looks at character.  Here are definitions I found for the original Greek for “lovely”:

*”That which is admirable or agreeable to behold or consider.”

*”Pleasing, agreeable, lovely.”
*”Lovely and lovable.”
*”Gracious.”

Men can be lovely when the character and wisdom of Christ comes forth through their demeanor.

Women can be lovely...”paint or no paint”...when the character and wisdom of Christ comes forth through their demeanor.  One of the loveliest women of my life was a squat, gray-haired woman who wore a little lipstick “for Sundays.” But I most remember her for spreading the fragrance of Christ’s love in my life. She was part of my young adult life for less than a decade, but I will never forget her diligence in studying scripture and encouraging me with her prayers.

Think about whatever is lovely?  I can do that in savoring the beauties of God’s creation.  I can also do it in remembering those who “gave the rose” to my life.

 

Next: "of good report"

Think tank: "pure"

Canterbury bells--they also come in pink and blue.

I grew up with two brands of bathroom soap. Most prominent in the tub’s soap dish was a coral-colored brand touted for its deodorant properties. Occasionally it was used wash sassiness from children’s mouths, a practice I didn’t take to my own parenting!  The other was a white bar that claimed to be 99 44/100% pure.  It’s still sold today, though the market has turned in favor of “cleansers” with oils that stave off wrinkles. Almost 100% pure, they’re not.
 

But the little, enduring white bar still attracts buyers looking for something pure and simple. Its “whiteness” no doubt adds to its impression of being the right soap for cleansing away dirt. When I’m told in Philippians 4:8 to think about whatever is pure, I’m to focus on something that’s not contaminated.  “Pure” implies thinking about high moral character. While our culture drenches us with all that is “unclean,” we’re to rise above that, to come away from it.

 

I grew up in what has become a rare home: with two parents who loved God and made sure their children were regularly in church and Sunday school with them.  I went through the youth instruction classes, dutifully memorizing the answers about the church’s doctrinal teachings.  I didn’t engage in any major teen rebellion and studied hard, graduating fifth in my high school class of some 450. If you had then asked me to describe myself as a bar of soap, I’d be that “almost pure” white bar.  Knowing pride to be a sign, I left room for growth.  Ha!

Despite all the training in my childhood church, I didn’t really “get” the idea of a personal Savior until I became a young adult and moved to a new town for my first job.  I’m sure the salvation message—of Jesus dying for my sins--was part of early religious education. But there was also a strong emphasis on “works”—that if you do this or that, you will find favor with God and go to Heaven when you die.  Wrong! Finally, I heard teaching that connected the historical Jesus, who went through a horrible death for my sins, to the resurrected Christ waiting to be my personal redeemer.

I met Jesus as my Savior when I realized my “almost-pure” life was unbelievably sin-dirty by Heaven’s standards. I also learned of His extravagant forgiveness for the worst of sins.  King David, for example.  Here was a man tapped to be king, who spent his early life composing praise music, who tried to do right while waiting for his time to become king.  Years later, all that came crashing down.  Lust fulfilled. Murderous plan accomplished.  Finally, after miserable years, the King confessed his sins and prayed what is a model for us:

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.  –Psalm 51:7b

So how do we curb anxiety by thinking of things that are pure? By looking to the Savior who never sinned, who lived in purity and love. For me.  For you.

 

Next: "lovely."

 

Think tank: "just"

One of the most symmetrical of cultivated flowers, the iris seemed
 to me to best represent the balancing scales of justice.

Part of a series on Philippians 4:8.
“Lady Justice” is among classical statues greeting visitors to the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. She is blindfolded (for blind justice), and holds balanced scales (for fair judgment of good and evil) and a sword (for punishment for evil). She symbolizes the hope of law: that decisions will be balanced and fair, and that wrongdoing will be punished. In other words, that there will be justice.  When Paul wrote to urge believers to think about things that are “just” (Philippians 4:8),  he used a Greek word meaning “righteous toward God and man,” “right by divine or human standards,” and “not dualistic.”

So how do we “think on” things that are “just”?  My first thought is to dwell on God, whose justice is linked with undeserved mercy:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all righteousness. (1 John 1:9)
What a verse for someone who thinks he or she has “sinned too much”!  One evening I got a phone call from a distraught young woman who had been in our home Bible study group. I rushed to her apartment and found her emotionally out of control after her boyfriend talked her into having sex with him.  Gone was her dream of saving herself for her groom on her wedding night. She was ready to confess and accept God’s forgiveness, but didn’t think she deserved it. Then I shared with her Psalm 103:12, which says God removes that confessed sin as far away as the east is from the west. East and west never end; they just keep encircling the earth. Because she feared God might punish her for this sin for as long as she lived, she found this a freeing hope. She broke up with that man, moved away, grew in her faith, and eventually married a Christian man.

 God is just!  He is also our Justifier through the death of Jesus for our sins. That bedrock of faith, long ignored,  gripped the heart of Martin Luther who helped return the church to Biblical truth in a movement that became known as The Reformation.  Luther’s rally cry--“The just shall live by his faith”—came right out of scripture:  Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38. That truth exposed the lies of working for or paying for salvation, which the church had added on to fatten the clerical purse.

A just God is also one who opposes that which is not just. An extreme illustration of that is believed to be at the bottom of the Dead Sea. In the time of the Abraham, a terribly wicked and sexually immoral city, Sodom, existed in that area. God wanted to obliterate it. Enter Abraham, who asked God to spare Sodom for the sake of his nephew Lot and family, who lived there. Appealing to God’s mercy, Abraham said, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). Finally, God agreed spare Sodom if ten righteous people lived there. Not even ten righteous were found, so God in His blazing holiness extracted justice and punishment in a cataclysmic event. Only Lot and his two daughters survived as they fled; Lot’s wife perished as she looked back in a momentary yearning for the old life. A just God will not wink at sin.  He will “do right” and judge it.

Meditating on “just” is a reminder that God’s holy standards never change. At the end of time, He will fully judge good and evil in absolute fairness.  As I watch the world’s moral decline, the prospect of holy justice gives me hope…and a reason to keep telling about Jesus.

Next: “pure”

Think tank: honest

Second in a series on Philippians 4:8.

One of spring’s earliest bloomers, the lupine stalk bubbles with blossoms as its tip reaches to the sky. A member of the pea family (a genetic cousin is the sweet pea), its wild cousins are stunning as among the first flowers to sprinkle local hillsides. Simple and honest, they bring to mind the second Philippians 4:8 command to “think on” things that are honest (KJV).

One day at the grocery store checkout I got in line behind a woman with just a jug of milk.  Lifting it to the counter, she told the clerk, “This milk was on the bottom of my cart when I checked out and I forgot to show it to you. I saw it when I was loading my groceries into the trunk and knew I had to come back and pay for it.”

Honesty.  What a testimony!

Other, newer translations have chosen other words for the KJV’s “honesty,” semnos in the original Greek. It’s “honorable” (NLT), "noble" (NKJV), “worthy of reverence” (Amplified). One classic commentator suggested “nobly serious.” That brings up an image of wise, perhaps older, respected people. When we think on things that are “honest” we may think of people committed to uprightness. Like the lupine, they point up to God.

They are sources of godly wisdom.  Models of spiritual behavior. Lovers of God. Servers of God.  Some call them “mentors.”  I’ve had several in my life. Some became tight friendships, almost like a parent. Others threaded their golden wisdom in and out of my life as God wove the unique tapestry that is me.

In reading 1 Timothy 5 lately, I thought of such people in every church. In this passage, Paul was giving young Pastor Timothy a “performance review,” like so many of us have had in our jobs.  Paul’s counsel hints that Timothy, as pastor of a large church, may have been tempted to be too proud of his “training credentials” under famed apostle Paul. Listen to Paul’s advice:

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.  Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. (5:1)

Paul didn’t say, “Let ‘em have it, Timothy. Cut ‘em down to size.  Show ‘em who’s boss.”  Instead, he reminded Timothy to respect the wisdom that comes to older men and women with spiritual growth, and to leave no room for criticism from his generational peers.

As my husband and I discussed people we knew who were “semnos” or honest and spiritually mature, we recalled aging pastors and conference speakers who were part of our past. Their lives were open books that reflected God’s holiness. They left us an example—and a challenge. Are we pointing up to a holy God in all that we do?

Think tank: "true"

Blue columbine grow in a little triangle flowerbed of perennials my son planted for me several years ago. Oh, his creative touch with lavender, lupine and other flowers bringing a dead corner to life every spring. Though columbine come in many colors, I’m glad he chose blue, my favorite hue. It’s soothing and also connected with loyalty or constancy, as in “true blue.”  Maybe that’s why I pay extra attention with I come across “true” in the Bible as in the sense of real, ideal, genuine, manifest, uncompromised.. John called Jesus “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). Many passages in Revelation use “true” in describing God’s attributes. Then there’s Philippians 4:8, urging us to think about whatever is true.

It’s true that Paul wrote these words while a prisoner in Rome. But instead of complaining, he sought God’s true purposes in his situation and found the joy that throbs through this epistle. He gave struggling believers some “think tank” homework—to think  (meditate) on God’s praiseworthy attributes, starting with “true.” He knew it would change their outlooks and lives.

 

The “think tank” assignments follow Paul’s practical advice about surviving hard times: *Rejoice in the Lord always.  Long ago I had a car with a bumper sticker that said, “Praise the Lord Anyway!” One day a hefty teen guy was helping me carry out a big load of groceries. You guessed it: a glass jar rolled out and almost broke. Noticing my bumper sticker, he rolled his eyes and said, “Praise the Lord, anyway.”  I don’t think that’s quite what Paul had in mind! Instead, it is a mindset for life that says even when I can’t understand what’s happening, I rejoice in God who sees far ahead and helps me.

*Let your gentleness be evident to all.  I hope I’m not the lady who blusters about so much that people wish she wasn’t around. A “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4) has been on my “remember-to-practice” list for a long time. I’m glad Paul added, “The Lord is near.” He sees every speck of behavior, good or bad.

*Do not be anxious about anything. Oh, this one stings. Can’t I just be “concerned”? But carnal concern slops over into sinful anxiety quite easily.

*In everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Those with high anxiety are apt to be those who obey the “pray over problems” a lot.  They stay anxious because God doesn’t answer their prayers promptly enough or in the way they want. They forget the “thanksgiving” part, which would say, “God, this is big in my life. I don’t see a solution, but thank You that You already have a better answer in mind. Thank you that some day I’ll look back and see Your wisdom.  I praise you that it’s not all about me and my worry-prayers but about You being a wise, gracious and loving God.”

Living and praying God’s way, Paul said, results in true peace. It’s not that push-back-in- the-recliner for a sigh-filled “end of day,” but a spiritual peace that “transcends all understanding.” It will also “guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 7).  Now, that’s “beyond understanding.” 

Next: “honest”

Seeing more than yourself

Reflection ponds are great thinking places. When I paused near this one in a public garden, I thought of Paul’s admonition in Philippians 4:8 to think about things that are good. His list included whatever is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy.  At times, when life got challenging, I have needed such reminders to reflect on the positives that could come of problems.  It's amazing that Paul came up with such a list as he endured the negatives of Roman imprisonment.

The Bible offers another perspective on “reflection” in a proverb about the mirroring properties of still water:

As water reflects the face, so a man’s heart reflects the man. (Proverbs 27:19)
For a long time I associated this with the idea that our faces are windows into our hearts and personalities. By skin, eyes, and wrinkles, you can usually “tell” if a person lives a hard life or if they have a gentle spirit. Frown wrinkles? Watch out! Smiling eyes? Feel welcome.

But Bible teacher William MacDonald gave me another perspective on this in his commentary.  Most agree that still water is a great mirror.  But as for the second part of this verse, he remarked, “As you study other people, you see much that you find in yourself—the same emotions, temptations, ambitions, thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses.  That is why it happens that if a man preaches to himself, he is surprised by how many other people he hit.”*

When I started writing this blog five years ago--akin to MacDonald’s “preaching to yourself”-- I didn’t know who would resonate with the Biblical reflections rising from my own spiritual growth process. But as I consider God’s goodness and instruction to me, the same things apparently touch people around the world.

That’s a good reminder for any of us to be transparent about our walk with God. We never know when a lesson He teaches us will help someone else struggling in that area. In other words, when we look into that reflection pool, the face staring back may be a stranger who needs our encouragement and counsel.

Or, as Paul wrote, God comforts us in all our troubles “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received form God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

 

*Believer's Bible Commentary (Nelson, 1995, p. 860)