June 2022 | Philippians pt. 6
Philippians 4 | “stand firm”
Start this study by reading through Philippians chapter 4 — but before you do, take a few moments to slow down and connect with yourself and God’s Spirit. I encourage you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, feeling with your body as you breathe. As you breathe in and out, note that Spirit is present, is with you, and is experiencing God’s Word with you.
"Stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved."
How beautiful that Paul calls these people, his friends and co-laborers for the gospel, his beloved. It is tender; they are dear to his heart, special and important to him.
So, to his beloved, he shares these closing words - stand firm.
One of his first comments is about women who are in conflict. Whew, working through conflict could be a whole other focus in and of itself! But to focus on just one aspect of this specific mention, it shows something important: which is that conflicts are normal, even among Christians. Instead of being perfect people, it is our faith that distinguishes us from others, because our faith is what moves us past conflict to genuine repair and reconnection, not some compulsion to never mess up or “look good” to others on the outside. If you’ve worked through conflict with someone, a friend or coworker or even a romantic partner, it often feels very unimpressive; but moving from the conflict to genuine repair is what’s required for that relationship to continue in health. Instead of focusing on blame or shame within conflict, we are invited to follow the way of Jesus and put on ‘weakness’ or humility, choosing vulnerable connection even if it looks messy or feels risky. So, for those of us in a conflict right now (or even avoiding one!), let this be a simple reminder - it’s not the end point. We are free to name what’s happening and move back towards each other in vulnerability.
Just as he names the reality of the situation between Euodia and Syntyche, Paul moves on to name and normalize the experience of anxiety. It is such a common human experience that affected the Philippian church, and certainly affects us, as we follow Jesus. And just as Paul transitions to talk about trusting God through our anxiety, let’s consider the ways in which Jesus demonstrates trusting God through his own experience of emotional struggle.
Read through Matthew's telling as well as Luke's telling of Jesus in Gethsemane / How does Scripture portray Jesus and his expression of his emotions?
The story of Jesus in the Garden is such an intimate and forming experience. As he approached the uncertainty of the cross, the somewhat mysterious experience of bearing our sins and sacrificing his life for ours, he did not want to do it. He asked the Father to take this reality from him. In Luke's gospel, he says Jesus' body was so troubled he began to sweat drops of blood. We see the perfect Savior of the world experiencing sorrow and agony. Wow. And not only this, but we see Jesus using his emotions in an appropriate manner - he shared them with his friends and with his Father.
Emotions are meant to be shared. We were given these experiences to draw us closer in relationship to our safe others. This reflects our relational, divine nature - being made to exist in intimacy, our emotions were given to us as a gift to draw us closer in our relationships.
Jesus' emotions are troubling and painful - so painful he is sweating blood! But his actions show how our vulnerable, human experiences can connect us with others. We see this was appropriate because God actually responds to Jesus’ vulnerability. He sent an angel to be with him in this scary experience and strengthen him for what would come next. God didn't rush Jesus past his experience; he stayed with him, validating him and providing him the appropriate response of comfort.
These passages show us there is a way to be perfectly obedient as well as in emotional distress. Not only this, but they also show us God is a God of comfort. And just as Paul starts to articulate, God does not withdraw or contribute to our shame narrative when we feel anxious. Instead, he comforts and strengthens.
Reflect / Take a few moments and consider the following questions.
What's it like when you feel anxious? How does your body tell you that you are anxious?
How do you believe God views you when you are feeling this way?
What has it been like to read that God is a God of comfort, not shame?
Experiencing comfort through our anxiety is an experience so many of us are longing for - and this makes sense. A 2017 report from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) shares that “anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the US”, with roughly 20% of American adults having an anxiety disorder. That means that generally speaking, 1 out of 5 adults you interact with on a daily basis (if you live in the US) has an anxiety disorder, with of course even more people experiencing anxiety in their daily lives without being formally diagnosed.
As I’ve grown in my own understanding of anxiety, including the ways it shows up in my life or the lives of others, I find NAMI’s definition to be really valuable and helps expand the ways Scripture addresses and speaks to our human, emotional experience. LCSW and author Hilary Jacobs Hendel shares in a NAMI article that we have several core emotions that serve a “biological and evolutionary purpose” to help us survive, including emotions such as fear, anger, joy, and sadness. We have these core emotions in order to move us towards safety or connection; they are primary experiences for us that often move us towards certain behaviors or actions (to see a visual representation of core and responsive emotions, check out the Junto Institute’s diagram). A maybe ‘common’ example of this core emotion connection to action is found in our threat-response; when we feel fear, we have a very human response to actions of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So just as the core emotion of fear is a gift meant to move us to safety, the same can be said for our other emotions; when we are able to experience and share these emotions with others and feel safely met in return, we are able to move through the emotion and move forward in life.
The concept of core and reactionary emotions might seem like straightforward information to some of you, but just for all of us to be on the same page, let’s connect with the prevalence of these emotions in our lives. When was the last time you felt joy? Identify the moment and set the scene in your mind. What was it like? When you’ve finished picturing that moment, think about the last time you felt anger. What happened? And can you connect with the last time you felt sad? Just this week, I felt so much joy as I got to sit home and finish a good book - all before 8pm! A rare and joyful moment. As to sadness, just last night I sat in my son’s room, teary as I went through his old clothes, wondering how the time has gone so quickly and how can it be that he’s almost 2 years old. Both those emotions felt inevitable; what a blessing it was to have space to read and finish a good book, and of course I felt the bittersweet moment of sadness as my son grows but love as I reflect on how much he means to me. All sounds pretty normal, right?
But let’s jump back to the emotion wheel and core emotion vs. response emotion reality - notice how anxiety isn’t in the core emotion list. Jacobs Hendel writes how anxiety is different from a core emotion. She calls it “an inhibitory emotion” that actually “results from avoiding core emotions and needs.” Anxiety actually “results from the physical effort to push down” our core emotions, and sadly, she shares how it’s generally truthful that “the amount of anxiety we experience is linked to our early experiences with emotions.” In other words, how frequently and strongly we experience anxiety is usually directly connected to our early life experiences of feeling our core emotions - the things gifted to us for survival - and being able to move through them safely and with acceptance.
Let’s slow down and reflect on this statement as well because it’s really big. Can you think of a time growing up when you felt afraid? What did you do? Did you tell your parents or caregivers? Why or why not? Try and remember what happened next, whether you told them or not. What was that moment like for you?
I can imagine that if you did that thought experiment just now, you were able to connect with an important reality about yourself and your story. The truth is that we were created to need others to help us regulate with our core emotions. If we were able to experience that safely and enough, then we are most likely able to move through life feeling the world is safe and we can take risks and enjoy life. But, if we had early experiences of not feeling safe in our core emotions, and instead experiencing things such as feeling alone, rejected, betrayed, or abandoned, then Jacobs Hendel says anxiety resulted in order to help us inhibit these overwhelming primary emotions instead of feeling and sharing them as we were created to do. Some examples of this process could have looked something like a parent getting mad when a child expressed sadness, a caregiver telling their child to “get over” their fear, being punished and left alone when a child disagrees with their parent or messes up, or an unavailable caregiver who wasn’t even around to help make sense of their child’s core emotions in the first place.
Our core emotions are assets that help move us to safety and move us to others. Since we are created to reflect God’s image, our bodies are wired to need the loving care of others in order to move through our core emotions and progress forward in life; so, in short, people are inherently a part of our safety system in the physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. This gift of reliance might start at birth as perhaps a survival instinct, but the need never goes away. We never stop needing safe connection with others to experience safety in our bodies. So, for those of us who maybe aren’t children anymore but still find ourselves feeling core emotions (i.e., a normal human being), what can come up instead of feeling our fear or sadness and moving on is the way we learned to regulate our core emotions so long ago - anxiety. Instead of feeling afraid and sharing it with someone we love and trust, our bodies learned to try and squash our fear and we experience the physical symptoms of inhibiting something core in our bodies. We feel nervous or tense, have a sense of doom, get short of breath, have trouble sleeping, get GI distress, and ruminate over all the things that could go wrong.
If you can resonate with some of those anxiety symptoms, know I am so sorry and I feel for you - I know how distressing and crippling anxiety can be. It can leave us feeling so disconnected, alone, insecure, and overwhelmed. Know that just as the NAMI article mentions, and even Scripture as well, as we see in this chapter of Philippians, experiencing anxiety is an incredibly normal experience. Research and experience informs us how your anxiety makes sense. And know it isn’t the end of your story; but before we continue on the story we can look to because of Jesus, let’s slow down and digest this information together.
Reflect / Take a few moments and consider the following questions.
What’s it like to read about the difference between fear and anxiety?
Have you ever learned how anxiety can develop?
Can you remember early experiences of being able to share your core emotions, like fear and sadness, with others? Can you remember experiences where you couldn’t share those emotions, or you did and it didn’t go well? What happened to you, and what did you do next?
What emotion comes up right now as you process those experiences? Can you identify a core emotion? If so, write it down or say it out loud, and reflect on what it’s like to connect with a core emotion in this present moment.
The story in the Garden is so powerful because Jesus can, in his own way, resonate with the experience of anxiety. Maybe his experience wasn’t a physiological response trying to inhibit fear, but he can resonate with being in emotional turmoil (which isn’t that what anxiety feels like for us so often?). He was sweating blood and repeating the same prayer to God, his body seemingly focused on the danger that was to come. But Jesus does something important by reaching out to God, and we see God’s response in kind - the Father reaches back. Jesus feels his emotion, shares it with the Father, and moves through it in order to move forward to the cross.
And it is this pattern of feeling, reaching, and being met with a safe relationship, the very experience we were all created to need time and time again, that is made explicit in the Garden but seen eternally through the gospel story of Jesus. We have been promised forever, safe connection with our eternal Father through all our experiences; and Paul encourages the Philippian church to embody this pattern of feeling, sharing, and connecting as they experience their own emotional turmoil. He encourages them to, when feeling anxious, to instead of inhibiting their deeper emotion to instead share their requests with God. He tells them to go to the core of their experience! He tells them to make their “requests known to God.” Paul is encouraging them to risk being vulnerable with God for the sake of experiencing his comforting presence.
So, how do we live this way? As I reflect on my faith journey so far, I have absolutely found this process to be true. However, it’s taken years for my body to take in and trust the presence and peace of Jesus and the Father. Even though I was surrounded by safe people and no one was telling me I couldn’t be vulnerable with my “core emotions”, my body has had to slowly learn to let my guard down, be vulnerable, and trust. This has come through many conversations with friends, my spouse, mentors, and a counselor. It’s true that not everyone’s journey includes counseling, but I do believe everyone’s journey includes the help of others. Just as Paul has so often encouraged in this letter, having safe and healthy relationships is vastly influential into our experience of God and even ourselves. So, know it is incredibly normal if you learned something new today but leave this moment and still struggle with anxiety. Consider that perhaps your body is telling you that you, just like all of us, need the care and presence of safe others to be with you in the process of learning to lean into your vulnerability and share it with others - to move through your vulnerable emotions and move forward in life and in connection. Let Paul’s words not create some ethereal expectation, but let them be an invitation to consider letting God and others into your experience, for this is the corrective experience your body needs - to feel deeply and to not be alone.
Meditate / Take a few moments to meditate on the sentence below as you finish this study today.
“There is no shame for the anxious. There is no shame for me when I feel anxious. There is also an end in sight - being connected with Jesus. This is what Paul says is available to me. It’s not that my anxiety will instantly go away, but that Jesus understands and longs to be with me in my emotional space. I am not too much; my emotions are not a burden; I am not the problem. I am not alone; I am with Jesus.”