"Steady As We Go" (May 17, 2026 Sermon)

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: Philippians 4:1-9

A Dave Matthews Band lyric open a door into one of the most quoted and most misunderstood passages in the Bible: Philippians 4. “Stand firm” can sound like stubbornness, but we hear it as something closer to a helmsman’s call in rough water: hold your heading, keep moving, trust the vessel is sound.

We sit with the real tension behind Paul’s words, including a conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, and we trace how Paul refuses to take sides. Instead, he calls the church to help, to practice gentleness, and to stay united. That leads us into the Presbyterian idea of mutual forbearance: accepting differences, respecting conscience, and continuing to work together for church unity even when agreement feels impossible.

Then we take seriously the hard lines: “Do not be anxious,” “Rejoice,” “the peace of God will guard your hearts.” These are not empty slogans from comfort. They come from a writer in chains. We talk about what it means to believe “the Lord is near” when the news cycle is relentless, our hearts are tired, and joy feels out of reach. Finally, we explore Paul’s surprisingly practical counsel for spiritual formation: train your attention toward whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, and worthy of praise, and let worship become a counter-liturgy to the endless scroll.

If you’ve been craving steadiness without denial, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs peace, and leave a review with the phrase that helps you stay steady.

Follow us on Instagram @guilfordparkpresbyterianchurch
Follow us on Facebook @guilfordparkpc
Follow us on TikTok @guilfordparkpreschurch
Website:  www.guilfordpark.org

Transcript

Prayer And Philippians Reading

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Please pray with me. Spirit of glory, Spirit of God, bless us with the word of life this day to restore, support, and strengthen us as we seek to be one with you. Amen. Our first reading today is from Philippians chapter 4, verses 1 through 9. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge you, Odia, and I urge Sintiki to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the work Lord always. Again I say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the peace of God will be with you. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

Steady As We Go Song Story

Conflict In The Philippian Church

Mutual Forbearance And Church Unity

The Lord Is Near In Anxiety

Training Attention Toward The Good

Worship As A Counter Liturgy

Restless Spirits And Being Held Steady

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So in the interest of time, I'm actually going to skip the second lesson because for the topic of my sermon, I'll be focusing exclusively on the portion that you have already heard from Rebecca. So, Gene, back there in the live stream table, if you just want to skip this scene and go to the sermon, you can go ahead and do that. Thanks, Gene. All right, friends, let us uh let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. So I uh did not get much sleep last night because I made a foolish but wonderful decision to go see Dave Matthews Banding concert in Charlotte last night. Um I I did not get back until about 1 a.m. last night, I must confess. But I happened to be, in my defense, I happened to be in Charlotte, anyways, for a wedding that I was doing, and the algorithm gods learned of my plans and let me know that Dave Matthews band was going to be playing immediately after the ceremony. So I just couldn't help myself. Though I didn't, though the song didn't make it onto the set list last night, on the way back home to Greensboro in the wee early hours of last night, I found myself humming one of my favorite songs of theirs called Steady as We Go. It's a song that is sung from one lover to another, giving thanks for the steadiness of their shared relationship, which keeps the person grounded when everything around them seems to be shifting beneath their feet. I'm not going to sing it for you, for I am no Dave Matthews, but the lyrics in part go like this. I walk halfway around the world just to sit down by your side, and I would do most anything, girl, to be the apple of your eye. Troubles, they may come and go, but good times, they're the gold. So if the road gets rocky, girl, just steady as we go. When the storm comes, shelter me. I don't say a word anymore, and yet you know exactly what I mean. In the darkest times you shine on me, set me free, forgive me. Steady as we go. Now, as a pastor whose first church was on a small island with no bridges, where understandably boats are kind of important, I appreciate a solid nautical metaphor. When the storm comes, shelter me, Dave Matthew sings. So steady as we go. That phrase, or more specifically, steady as she goes, is a helmsman's phrase. It doesn't mean stop moving, it doesn't mean drop anchor. It doesn't mean we're going to stop and wait for better weather. It just means hold your current heading, stay true to the course, trust that the destination is ahead, and that the vessel is sound. This advice offers a good summary of the heart of the fourth and final chapter of Paul's letter to the Philippians. But Paul doesn't arrive at this council of steady as she goes out of nowhere. We've had hints in earlier chapters of division or tension within the Philippian church. In the first chapter, Paul speaks of others preaching Christ from other motives, from places of envy or rivalry. And in that chapter, he encouraged his readers not to be frightened by those opposing them. And then in chapter two, he urged them to do all things without murmuring or arguing. And then last week in chapter three, he spoke frankly about others who are living as, quote, enemies of the cross of Christ. Now, though we don't know the specifics of these conflicts, we can imagine the world of the Philippian church not so different from the one that we inhabit today, where we don't always get along with one another. At the Presbytery meeting that I attended last week at nearby Westminster Presbyterian Church, we briefly discussed a concept known as mutual forbearance. It's a phrase that may sound foreign to some of us, that we may not use a whole lot in our everyday speech, but it's important because mutual forbearance is one of the historic principles of our denomination, the Presbyterian Church. Mutual forbearance is a fancy term that means this. It calls on theological opponents to accept differences, respect conscience, and continue working together to maintain church unity. If you happen to have a book of order just because you love a good time, you will find it in the F section-3.0105. I know y'all are all what can't wait to go home and read that. But it reads as follows: It says, We believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which persons of good characters and principles may differ. And in all these, we think it the duty of both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward one another. What a concept. Now, the Book of Order didn't invent mutual forbearance, it inherited it from a letter written from a Roman prison addressed to a congregation, maybe not that different from our own. In this anxiety-ridden atmosphere, we hear an ancient word from Paul, an old wisdom for our contemporary world, steady as we go, or as Paul puts it in the passage that Rebecca read for a stand firm. Now I ask myself what those two words, stand firm, sound like to me in today's context. And my first reaction was, hold your ground, be stubborn, and never, ever, ever budge. But that's not what Paul is saying when he says stand firm. Because the very next verses that the very next verses name a conflict between two women that Rebecca struggled to pronounce, and I confess I do too. I don't know how these names are pronounced, but I'll try. Your guess was as good as mine. Uodia and Sintiki. We're just going to go with that today. But there's some sort of conflict between them. And Paul invites these two persons, these two disciples, to come together, or as he puts it, to be of the same mind in the Lord. What Paul is describing, in other words, is mutual forbearance. And notice what Paul does not do here. He doesn't take sides. He doesn't say this person's right, this person's wrong, or vice versa. He doesn't tell us who is right. He names them both with love. He calls them both his equals, his co-workers. And then he trusts that the same gospel that sent them into the work together can bring them back to each other. Stand firm, he says, by coming together. Stand firm, he says, by helping one another. Stand firm, he says, by being gentle with one another. But if I'm completely honest with myself, I think that gentleness and helping one another, and in general coming together, are not disciplines that our body politics seems to reward too much these days. Which is why Paul doesn't expect these fruits of the Spirit to come from such places. Instead, in the text, Paul insists that they are freely given because the Lord is near, he says. Mutual forbearance is possible because the Lord is near. Steady as she goes is doable because the Lord is near. And this is an important theological move by Paul because it would be a tempting to think that our abysmal circumstances are evidence of Christ's absence. But Paul points to the opposite. The Lord is near, he says, even when you are in conflict. The Lord is near, he insists, even when Euodia and Syntichi, or any of you don't always see eye to eye. The Lord is near, Paul preaches, no matter the difficulties that assail you. Paul's been saying this from the prison cell since chapter one, and he's not finished yet. And I'll pause at this point in the sermon and confess, if again, if I am honest with myself, that I think that knowing in my head that Christ is near and feeling it in my heart are sometimes two very different things. There is much in today's passage from Philippians that can sound terribly trite in a complex world. Do not be anxious about anything. Can fall flat in an anxious world with anxious algorithms, anxious consumers, and one anxious news cycle after another. The peace of God will guard your hearts. Can feel like an empty promise when our hearts feel like they can't take another blow. Rejoice! Again, I will say rejoice. It can feel like a tall order when joy feels indulgent amid the sheer volume of suffering around us. But we must never forget that these words of encouragement to the Philippians did not come from a place of comfort or privilege. They do not come from the mouth of someone in a smoking jacket, swirling a martini with Sinatra on the record player and not a care in the world. These words come from someone who is in literal chains, who doesn't know whether the letter that he's writing to his friends will be his last. And I think that matters. What Paul is turning us to here is not some Pollyanish theology. On the contrary, he is all too aware of the fact that it can be hard to hold a steady as she goes approach to faith when so much around us appears to be falling apart. He knows that standing firm is no easy task. He knows that mutual forbearance is not an instinctual posture for most of us, especially when we're taught that what matters the most is what's best for me and my own. Paul knows that none of that is easy. Which is why he gives the Philippians a list of things to which they should tune their attention to stay true to the course. He says, whatever is true, honorable, just pure, pleasing, commendable. If there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. Paul knows that we must train our gaze on these things in order to stay steady as she goes. And we are doing exactly those things right now in this very room. So I think that we focus on whatever is true, for example, when we affirm the Apostles' Creed and we declare together what the church has held true across centuries and across continents. We focus on whatever is honorable, for example, when we dedicate flowers in someone's honor, in someone's memory, such as the flowers today that I believe were given in honor of Mary L. Sullivan by the Stiles family. We focus on whatever is just when we collect pennies for hunger to feed our hungry neighbors. We focus on whatever is pure when we confess our sins and we trust in the mercy of God and we seek to turn away from evil. We focus on what is pleasing when we simply show up together, when we choose on a Sunday morning to be here with one another, in the pews or online, when we could be anywhere else. We focus on whatever is commendable when we share the peace of Christ with one another and the passing of the peace, reminding ourselves that God calls us to be at peace with one another in a divided world. And we focus on whatever is excellent and worthy of praise when we sing hymns that the church has carried across centuries, including the one whose refrain is drawn almost word for word from the very passage we're sitting with this morning. Paul isn't giving the Philippians a self-help checklist. He's describing the church's gathered life, what we're doing right now. What you and I do every day confess, receive pardon, sing, give, pray, pass the peace, go out with joy is the practice of directed attention that Paul commends. And when we focus on these things repeatedly and with intentionality, we're offering, and hear me, church, we're offering a counter-liturgy to the endless scroll of whatever anxious, divisive, degrading, and enraging things are in the world around us. It's a counter-liturgy, and it's powerful. So, as we do from time to time here at Guilford Park, y'all are going to help me finish the sermon by singing the next hymn, Jesus, thou love thou joy of loving hearts. We'll close with a hymn that's been on the lips of Christians since the twelfth century, and I want to sit with you for a moment in its fourth verse before we sing it. The fourth verse that we'll say sings as this Our restless spirits yearn for thee, where'er our changeful lot is cast. Glad when thy gracious smile we see, blessed when our faith can hold thee fast. Our restless spirits yearn for thee. As the Philippians did, we come to worship in a restless world, with our spirits often feeling like that boat that carried the disciples on a stormy sea. We're not at peace yet, or at least not fully, but we're reaching for it together. We come here by pew or live stream because, like the Philippians, we long to be at peace with one another and ourselves, and we know we need help to do that. Where'er our changeful lot is cast, and we know that we need this help because everything is changing so fast. Do y'all feel that with me? And amid such shifting ground beneath our feet, we need a steadiness that comes from God and not ourselves. Glad when thy gracious smile we see. And though we're restless and though everything around us changes at a dizzying pace, we remain as steady as she goes. Because we trust that God smiles upon us, even and especially in our feeble and fearful moments. And finally, blessed when our faith can hold thee fast. And finally, we find what Paul found in chains that the faith by which we hold is itself the gift of the one who held us first. We do not hold ourselves steady, we are held steady. Steady as we go.