Rejoice Always: Philippians 4:4-9
Learning the Holy Discipline of Breathing
By Greg Russell
Renovate Church—Centennial CO
We are deep into our study of Philippians, Dancing in the Light. If you’ve been keeping up with the Renovate blog the past few weeks, you know that this series title is a metaphor for our life in Christ: dancing represents our active expression of joy, and the light represents the Lord Himself.
This week, we finally hit the peak of the mountain—the memory passage that so many of us have been hiding in our hearts: Philippians 4:4–9.
If we are honest, this passage can feel a bit intimidating when you read it fast. Rejoice always? Don’t be anxious about anything? That sounds great on a coffee mug, but it can feel incredibly out of touch when you are staring down a bad medical report, a collapsing marriage, or a mountain of financial pressure.
But Paul isn’t writing this from a luxury resort. He’s writing from a filthy Roman prison cell, chained to a guard, facing potential execution. When Paul tells us to rejoice, he isn’t offering shallow toxic positivity. He’s offering us a battle strategy.
The Act of Rejoicing vs. Your Circumstances
Notice that Paul commands this twice: “Rejoice… I will say it again: Rejoice!”
There is a distinct difference between joy and rejoicing. Joy is an internal state—something you experience and feel. But rejoicing is an action. It is the outward expression of that joy.
Paul understood a profound spiritual truth that our modern culture completely misses: True Christian joy does not come from your circumstances. It comes from being in the Lord.
This reality has been tested in my own life in a massive way lately with my health and the physical conditions I’m navigating. But I can testify to you firsthand: joy is a pervasive, powerful, unshakeable sense of well-being. It is the ability to look at a broken body or a chaotic situation and say with absolute sincerity, “It is well with my soul.”
The Spiritual Biology of Breathing
To help us lay hold of this unshakeable peace, Paul lays out a brilliant rhythm of spiritual respiration. If you want to stay alive physically, you have to master both phases of breathing: you must breathe out, and you must breathe in. If you only do one, you die.
The exact same thing is true of your spiritual life.
1. Breathing Out: Prayer, Petition, and Gratitude
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (v. 6)
When anxiety, fear, or physical suffering press in on you, your immediate spiritual reflex must be to breathe out.
We all know we are supposed to pray, but how often is it actually our first response when trouble hits? Paul calls us to a lifestyle of prayer and petition—which literally means “persistent seeking.” It’s an active, ongoing conversation with God throughout your day.
And notice the modifier: with thanksgiving.
Gratitude and anxiety cannot occupy the same space in your brain at the same time. You cannot be actively complaining and actively grateful simultaneously. Gratitude is the force that aggressively pushes anxiety out of the room. When you breathe out your anxieties through grateful prayer, Paul attaches an incredible promise to it:
The Promise: The peace of God, which completely transcends human logic and understanding, will stand like a military guard to protect your heart and your mind. It’s a peace that makes absolutely no sense given the severity of your crisis, yet it holds you secure.
2. Breathing In: The Battle for the Mind
“Finally… whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (v. 8)
Once you have emptied your lungs of anxiety, you can’t just leave them empty. You must immediately breathe in truth.
Throughout this series, we have repeatedly emphasized that the mind is the primary battlefield of spiritual warfare. Scripture gives us very few instructions on how to feel, but it gives us an immense volume of instructions on how to think.
Why Right Thinking Matters Right Now
As a pastor, I realize that focusing heavily on right thinking can sometimes feel secondary to emotional, high-energy experiences. But your motivation in life only changes permanently when your understanding changes.
If this building were on fire right now, and you fully understood that truth, I wouldn’t need to whip you into an emotional frenzy to get you to run outside. Your correct thinking would instantly drive your actions. My job as a pastor is simply to get you to think right about God and the world—to see what a burning building looks like metaphorically—and your motivation to follow Him will naturally follow.
And right now, we need to look honestly at how we think, because our culture is profoundly addicted to feeling.
Dallas Willard accurately defined addiction as “the total surrender of your will and your reason to your feelings.” If it feels good, do it. That has become the highest cultural law. It is exactly what Paul warned about in the previous chapter when he described people who reject God by saying, “Their god is their stomach” (Philippians 3:19)—meaning they are completely governed by their immediate internal, subjective cravings.
Good churches and good people are buying into this bad philosophy every day without even realizing it. They believe that absolute truth doesn’t exist, that everything is relative, and that “finding your truth” is the ultimate goal.
But Paul combats this cultural slide by placing one specific attribute at the very front of his list: “Whatever is true.”
Truth exists, it is absolute, and it can be known in the person of Jesus Christ. If you allow your feelings to guide your life, it leads to death. But if you allow the Holy Spirit to instruct your thinking, it leads to life and peace.
Put It into Practice
Paul closes this entire section by pointing straight back to his own life as a tangible example:
“Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (v. 9)
What good is excellent theology if it never leaves your notebook? What good is memorizing scripture if it doesn’t change the way you treat your family, handle your anxiety, or look at the world around you?
What Paul is teaching here is the exact same message Jesus preached. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent (change your thinking) and believe (put it into practice).”
This week, let’s commit to mastering the spiritual biology of breathing. When the world gets heavy, breathe out your anxiety through grateful prayer. Breathe in the objective, unchanging truth of God’s Word. And then, intentionally put His commands into daily practice.
When you do, you won’t just experience the peace of God guarding you—you will experience the physical, comforting presence of the God of peace walking right beside you.