"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:4-7
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a surprising tool in its arsenal called the 'Waffle House Index' to determine the effect of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery. The idea is that if you get to an area affected by a storm and Waffle House is closed, then it's really bad. The index has three levels based on the extent of operations and service at the restaurant following a storm:
GREEN: Full Menu – The restaurant has power and damage is limited or no damage at all.
YELLOW: Limited Menu – No power or only power from a generator, or food supplies may be low.
RED: The Restaurant is Closed – Indicates severe damage or severe flooding.
The point is that even Waffle House can't, with full integrity, use a word like "always." In fact, the things in the world about which you can use fully inclusive terms like "always, all, or never" are very, very few.
And that's what makes today's passage in Philippians 4 all the more striking:
This passage leaves us no wiggle-room:
Rejoice in the Lord always
Let your gentleness be known to everyone
Don't worry about anything
In everything pray
There are no "if's" or "but's" here; there is no allowance for special circumstances; it's all-inclusive. Now, what are we to do with that?
It's a hard thing for us if we are honest with ourselves because we are wiggle-room people. We might be mostly joyful; or mostly gentle; or mostly calm, but there are those special circumstances that push us over the edge. Or there are those special people that push our buttons. So what are we to do with a passage like this that doesn't make allowances for those kinds of circumstances?
The first thing we ought to do is to recognize that what Paul is describing here is more than just individual actions; it is a posture of living, and those are different things. The word posture is defined like this: "position, condition, or state, as of affairs."
In a physical sense, your posture is how you generally hold yourself. It's not a static term, meaning that you are always sitting or standing, or bending. All of us do those things a thousand times a day. Your posture, though, is a general position. In fact, it's your posture that influences the way you hold yourself in all those other movements. It determines just how you stand or sit or bend.
That's true in a physical sense, but it's also true in other ways. You have a mental posture. You have an emotional posture and a spiritual one, too. And most likely, you also have a specific posture when it comes to the relationships in your life. This is your default condition as it relates to that person or people, and depending on who they are, it might be a posture of welcoming, or of joy, or of defensiveness, or of resentment, or anywhere in between. You've got a posture when it comes to your boss. And your spouse. And your closest friends.
Often, though, we don't even realize that we have a posture; we only react at the moment. But our posture preconditions the way we respond in each individual moment.
Now here is how it relates to us when it comes to believing the gospel – when we believe the gospel, it's not just that our actions change; it's that our posture changes. The thing behind those actions is radically altered.
Jesus isn't only interested in us doing the right thing. He's interested in us becoming the right people. The gospel, then, is not just a message of eternal destiny; it's a message of internal identity. It doesn't just change where you're going; it changes who you're becoming.
The gospel changes our posture, both immediately as it comes to our standing before God and over time as God works in us to conform us to the image of Jesus. This is the journey we are on, friends. Not just to rejoice, not just to give thanks, not just to act gently, not just to pray – but to be those kinds of people.
