Ep 125: Finding Peace in a Chaotic World

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"Today, Plays On Word Radio urges believers to reject media-driven anxiety and embrace Philippians 4:6–7, finding unshakable peace in God's presence amid today’s chaos. How can you practically apply Philippians 4:6–7 when overwhelmed by constant negative news and global tragedies?"

Finding genuine peace feels nearly impossible in today's world of endless negative news cycles, political division, and global tragedies. But as Pastor Teddy (Fred David Kenney Jr.) reminds us in this powerful episode, we have access to a peace that transcends understanding.

Pastor Teddy opens with a candid confession about purposefully disconnecting from cable news after recognizing its harmful effects on his spiritual well-being. "If you think news is really to inform you, I have a bridge to sell you," he states bluntly. All mainstream media outlets, regardless of political leaning, prioritize revenue over truth-telling, profiting from keeping audiences emotionally charged and divided. This environment makes it increasingly difficult for believers to maintain their Christian character in response to world events.

The heart of this episode centers on Philippians 4:6-7, where we find the divine antidote to anxiety: "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." Pastor Teddy breaks down the progression from receiving God's grace to experiencing peace with God, and finally to being filled with the peace of God that guards our hearts regardless of circumstances.

Between reflections on recent tragedies like riots in LA and a plane crash in India, Pastor Teddy shares exciting updates about Plays on Word Theater's upcoming East Coast Tour and their plans to resume work on their "DAN" play. The ministry's commitment to freely sharing God's Word stands as a powerful contrast to the profit-driven media landscape.

Whether you're struggling with anxiety, feeling overwhelmed by current events, or simply seeking deeper spiritual peace, this episode offers biblical wisdom that speaks directly to our modern challenges. Take a moment to disconnect from t

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Rejoice in the Lord, always.
Again, I will say rejoice.
Let your reasonableness beknown to everyone.
The Lord is at hand.
Do not be anxious aboutanything, but in everything, by
prayer and supplication, withthanksgiving, let your request
be made known to God and thepeace of God, which surpasses

(00:28):
only thing.
You're the only thing.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Hello and welcome to Plays on Word Radio, where we
discuss, analyze, work and playon the Word of God.
Thank you for joining us onthis excursion.
Today let's join Pastor Teddy,also known as Fred David Kenny
Jr, the founder of Plays on WordTheater as he does a deep dive
into the Word of God.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Amen, amen.
Thank you very much, mr JoshTaylor and Katie Kenney, for
that introduction.
My name is Fred David Kenney Jrand I want to welcome you to
Plays on Word Radio.
We've been rocking steady fortwo years now.
Yeah, this is episode 125.

(01:41):
If you have not heard them all,go back and listen.
There's a special sale we'rerunning right now on all the
episodes.
You can stream them forabsolutely free.
A special discount, limitedtime only.
Oh man, how are you all doing?

(02:06):
Okay?
Okay, I'm getting some amen,some okays.
Some people say not so good.
I heard somebody say betterthan bad.
Okay, I'll take it.
Hey, we're above ground rightnow.
We're breathing.
While we have breath we can sayamen, praise the Lord,

(02:26):
hallelujah, while we have breath.
There's a lot of stuff happeningright now in this world.
In the world right now, there'sa lot of stuff going down.
I mean, man, I don't consumethe news the way I used to, and
that's on purpose.
I purposely put away cable newsyears ago because they were.

(02:53):
You know, it's all abouteyeballs on the screen and
selling you product,particularly drugs from drug
companies, particularly drugsfrom drug companies.
That's the primary purpose.
If you think the cable news orany news, you think news is
really to inform you, I have abridge to sell you.
Um, it's, it's not.

(03:14):
It's it's about advertising.
It's about eyes on the screen.
If you're listening to radio,it's about ears listening to the
ads.
And so I basically purposely domy best to avoid all cable news
.
There's not one.

(03:35):
That's not in the business.
Yeah, I'm stepping on some toesright now because I know some
of you.
Oh no, not my Fox News.
I love Fox News.
They're not.
Yeah, they are, they're in thebusiness.
Oh no, not CNN.
Yes, they're in the business.
All of them, all of them, and Ipurposely try to avoid that.

(03:58):
I do aggregate news articles,but even then, even the print,
it's the same thing.
It's all about the ads and youcannot be completely sure you're
getting the straight news.
The only thing that you can beconfident Hear me now the only

(04:19):
thing you can be confident in isthe word of God.
That's it, man.
That is it in.
Is the word of god, that's it,man.
That is it the word of god youcan bank on and put reliability
in, unless you're using it likea shady translation or something
like that.
Now I don't want to get anyemails from you, king james,
only people.
All right, I'm not talkingabout that.

(04:40):
God bless you.
But for the most part, ifyou're using a decent
translation, the Word of God.
Me personally, I like to go tothe Greek and the Hebrew, but
not everybody's going to bedoing that, okay, and the Word

(05:05):
of God is the only the onlyreliable source that we can go.
I'm telling you and I know I'mstepping on toes right now, what
do you mean?
I love Hannity.
He would never stop.
Please, just stop.
No wrong, they're all sellingyou stuff, man.

(05:26):
They're all selling you stuff.
The only one that's not sellingyou anything is the Word of God
.
The Word of God is giving outthe truth, giving the truth, and
so, basically, I put most of mytime into the word of god.

(05:49):
I do get caught up in stupidyoutube shorts.
That's a, that's a scam initself, where you, you watch one
and then an hour later, you'veyou've watched 50 different
videos.
You can't't even say what anyof them meant.
It's an ugly, dark vortex.

(06:09):
People get sucked into and I amguilty of falling into that
sometimes.
I do try to avoid it Becauseit's a colossal waste of time,
absolute colossal waste of time.
I do like to.
I watch a lot of bodybuildingIFBB, mr Olympia, stuff like

(06:31):
that and just in my downtime,when I'm not looking up
scripture or I'm not in the wordor anything like that, I'll get
into the.
It's almost like WWE as far asbodybuilding today.
It's almost like the WorldWrestling Federation from back
in the day because of thecharacters.
There's so many characters init and there's intrigue who's

(06:53):
going to win this upcomingOlympia and who's going to come
in second or third.
There's a lot of dramasurrounding it.
But if you're not into thatthing, if you're not into it or
working out like that, that'sokay.
That's fine too.
But I did notice that there hasbeen so much news lately.
That was my long intro intothis.

(07:16):
There's so much news, so muchnegative news, particularly the
riots in LA.
You know I have not been payinga lot of attention to it, but I
did look at some articles andsome things that are happening

(07:38):
and it can make people veryuneasy.
Is this going to spread?
Is this problem going to spreadand can have us responding?
Whatever side of the argumentyou find yourself on, it can
tend to have us out of characteras Christians operating in the

(08:01):
love of God and we got to guardagainst that.
That's one of the reasons why Iactually stopped watching cable
news, because I would get soupset.
The Lord put me in check.
He put me in check.
I'd be so upset and I'd behollering at the TV.
It would wreck my whole evening.

(08:22):
I'm walking around upset, tense,and the Lord was like you know,
you were saved to live for somuch more man.
You know, this is out ofcharacter for me.
That's what the Lord said to me.
This is out of character for me, you know, and we are to
imitate.
It says in Ephesians we're toimitate God, Imitate Him.
Yeah, put on the Lord, jesusChrist, we're told in Scripture.

(08:47):
And if the things of this worldpull you out of character, to
where you are reacting ratherthan responding, oh help me,
holy Ghost, can I get an amen?
If you're reacting rather thanresponding and you're reacting

(09:07):
in a way that reflects the worldaround you, so you find
yourself reacting in a way thatis let me just give you the
example of me I found myselfreacting and reacting the way
the world was acting and I wasangry, upset, calling people

(09:29):
people I don't even know namesNow, whether they were idiots or
not.
You know their actions werestupid in my assessment.
But for me to call them idiotsor fool, I'm telling you the
Bible is pretty clear on thatman.
We need to be careful.

(09:50):
We can call what they do stupid.
Yeah, that was a stupid move.
That was not a very wise move,but I found myself making
judgment on certain people overridiculous things.
And the different entities inthe media have a vested interest

(10:12):
in having different sides ateach other's throats and they're
not going to find any way tobring anybody together.
That's not in their bestinterest.
No, it's in their best interestto keep people fighting.
So there's controversy.
So people tune in.

(10:33):
And why people tune in?
They're tuning in.
They're going to see thecommercials and the ads.
They can sell more ads.
I'm telling you it's aboutadvertising.
And if you don't think it'sabout advertising, I really do
have a bridge to sell you.
Now, when something's good,something's really good.
My buddy Orlando Bergo saysthis about authors.

(10:55):
He's like if you have so muchgreat information in your book,
why don't you just give it away?
If it's so good, give it away.
Plays on word.
We do not charge to come out.
No, the Lord provides we bring.
We're like Michelin chefsserving up the word of God on a
silver or gold platter for you,and we're not charging you to

(11:17):
come out.
We do not charge to come outand do these plays and do what
we're doing.
We take that mentalityseriously.
Yeah, this is a life-savingelixir.
This is it's not snake oil, no,and we're not expecting
anything from you when we comeout.
The Lord has provided a voice.
He's provided a vehicle Some ofthem have been questionable but

(11:43):
he's provided vehicles, he'sprovided a trailer for us and
equipment and we come out and dowhat we have to do.
In fact, we have some playscoming up Northeast tour.
We're going to be doing andwe're in the process of setting
up, some southern plays.
Right now we're talking withpeople, they're going to get

(12:04):
back on dates and we are alsotrying to get our Dan play going
.
I didn't want to force it, Iknow some years ago I hate to
say that, but some years ago westarted on the Dan play and we
made some progress and the Lord,for whatever reason, basically

(12:30):
put things on hold for us.
There were other things we hadto take care of and, um, we had
a, the, I believe.
The year we started we had agnarly tour for the Pete play.
We had a lot of Pete plays thatwe were doing and it was just
difficult to put together, um,the dance.
Well, I shouldn't even say itwas.

(12:51):
It's difficult to put any playtogether without the filling of
the Holy Spirit and his leadingand guiding.
It's got to be him doing it.
I can try my best, but the waythe Pete play came together,
that was a work of God, not awork of me.
So I do.

(13:12):
I feel like the Lord is givingme a green light again and
saying okay, let's get back tothe planning stages of what we
were doing before.
And you know, in between whenwe started and now, there have
been major changes in our lives,me and Katie and our operation

(13:34):
where we're operating from,we're part of.
We planted a church, yeah, thatkind of stuff, and the Lord in
His mercy, gave us a little bitof time to just get feet
underneath us.
We're still kind of getting ourfeet.

(13:57):
I feel like a cartoon charactersometimes you know, at our feet
, like the Flintstones, how how,fred Flintstone, he'd start
running before the car even waswas moving.
He'd be a bit of his feet,would be like spinning and then
the car would move.
I feel like that's been me fora little while.
But anyway, the roundabout wayBack to our original discussion

(14:21):
here.
Sorry, add, but I'm letting youguys in on some of the madness
of my thinking and, yeah, someof my ADD offshoots of a
conversation here, of my ADDoffshoots of a conversation here
.
So back to the part of thisnews cycle and seeing these

(14:41):
things in the news, seeing thegood grief, I saw the plane
crash in India.
Oh, oh, my goodness, oh, mygoodness, it's awful, these guys
, they just took off.
It was a Boeing 787.
I don't think any one of thosehas ever crashed.
I think one skidded off arunway or something like that,
but I don't think anyone hasever crashed, especially on
takeoff.
Bizarre, like the landing gearwas not.

(15:05):
I think they only got to 640feet.
Landing gear never went up.
I don't know if the flaps everretracted, never went up.
I don't know if the flaps ever,uh, retracted.
And and the plane landed in aresidential area.
Man, part of the plane is on abuilding, it's.
It's just awful.
It's reported that everybody onboard died.

(15:27):
There were a bunch of peoplethat were British citizens going
back to England, there weresome Indian folks and I don't
know the rest of the group, itwas 240-something people and

(15:47):
their ticket has been punchedfor eternity.
And so looking at the riots,looking at the you know, like a
plane crash, like that, justlooking at all the different
things that the world serves upon a daily basis, it seems like
we can lose that's a wrong word,we can put down the peace that

(16:16):
the Lord has given us, and Ipreach this on Sunday, actually
almost every Sunday, I kind ofwork it in.
But you know, we have peacewith God and that has to come
first.
Actually, what comes beforethat is grace.
If you notice, in Paul'sletters, new Testament letters,

(16:40):
they usually start with, theyalways start with grace and
peace from God, our Father, andthe Lord Jesus Christ.
So grace comes first.
So grace comes first theunmerited favor, the move of God
.
God is the first to move.
No one finds God.
God found us Grace, god'sunmerited favor at Christ's

(17:07):
expense.
So God reached out to us Graceand then it says and peace from
God, our Father, our God, theFather, and the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And so we have the grace of Godand because of the grace of God

(17:27):
we now have peace with God,because God sent his one and
only son that whosoever wouldbelieve in him would not perish
but have eternal life.
So, in God sending his son tobe the propitiation, the payment
, the satisfactory stamp ofapproval, we now have access to

(17:53):
peace with God.
He has broken down the wall ofhostility between man and God.
There's one mediator betweenGod and man the man, christ
Jesus.
The hostility wall has beenbroken down in Christ right.
So there's no more hostility.
The offense of our sin has beenpaid for before the judge, who

(18:18):
is God, and he is the judge andChrist being the propitiation,
the payment, the satisfying ofour debt, has made possible
peace now, peace right.

(18:42):
So that peace that has beenmade possible because of the
grace of God now gives us accessto the peace of God, the peace
of God.
Listen to what Paul says inPhilippians.
He says Rejoice in the Lord.
Always, again, I will sayrejoice.
Let your reasonableness beknown to everyone.

(19:05):
The Lord is at hand.
Now, listen close.
If you're listening, say amen.
Or actually, if you'relistening, say amen or actually
text me amen.
If you're listening, text oremail me amen.
Verse 6 here.
Listen to this.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer

(19:26):
and supplication, withthanksgiving, let your request
be made known to God, and thepeace of God, which surpasses
all understanding, will guardyour hearts and your minds in

(19:46):
Christ Jesus.
Oh hallelujah.
Thank you, lord, for the, forthe word of God.
Oh, man, man, if that doesn't,if that doesn't calm your
anxious soul right there, allyou have to do is ask him Lord,
please fill me with your spirit,help me, help me, lord.
We are not to live in fear, weare not to live in anxiety, we

(20:10):
are not to live in tension,being all tense, upset, worked
up.
It says be anxious, don't beanxious about anything, but in
everything.
You know what that means.
In the Greek, the word, wetranslated everything.
It means everything.
Some of y'all know I heard yousay it.

(20:30):
But in everything, by prayerand supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requestbe made known to God.
Right, ha, and the peace of God, not the peace, not.
It doesn't say and peace withGod.
It says the peace of God, whichsurpasses what you can even

(20:51):
understand, is going to guardyour heart and your mind in
Christ Jesus.
It doesn't say maybe we'llguard your heart and mind in
Christ Jesus or possibly we'llguard your heart and your mind
in Christ Jesus.
No, it don't say that.
It says it will guard yourheart and your mind in Christ
Jesus.
If you're in Christ ha, you'rea new creation and this promise

(21:16):
applies, absolutely applies.
Take that to the bank, man.
Don't look at all this stuff inthe world and let it beat you
up and change you from who youare in the Lord.
No, the Lord is at hand.
Don't be anxious.

(21:37):
Can I get an amen?
Don't be anxious.
But let the Lord you know mybuddy, julian Brown, drummer in
the old band.
I was in Kindred and the familysold.
Way back in the day, man, hetold me.
He said yo, teddy, you keep itreal with God and he'll keep it

(22:02):
real with you, because I was.
I was at a point where the Lordhad brought me, where I was
stressing and we had a wrestlingmatch.
But he told me, and I neverforgot, to keep it real with God
, let him know how you feel, andthat's what Paul's saying.
But in everything, by prayer andsupplication, which means
asking for you to be suppliedwhat you need, and yet, with

(22:25):
thanksgiving, thanking him,start with something.
Hey, you have breath in yourlungs, you can thank him.
Can I get an amen to that?
Let your request be made knownto God.
He already knows what you needanyway.
But now we're dialoguing withhim with thanksgiving, respect,
and you're just honoring him.

(22:46):
Say, lord, this is what's on myheart.
Let it be made known to God.
And guess what?
The peace of God whichsurpasses all understanding.
You can't even understand it,but it's real.
But it's real.

(23:11):
It's a promise, and says we'llguard your hearts and your minds
in Christ Jesus.
If you're having troublesleeping because of stress, hey,
go read this Philippians 4, 6.
This applies to you If you'rein Christ.
This applies to you If you'rein Christ.
This applies to you.
If you're not in Christ, hey,you need to just pray and get

(23:35):
yourself in Christ.
Well, actually, that isn'tright.
Nobody gets themselves intoChrist.
You just need to pray and askhim to come into your life.
It means he found you.
If you're ready to do thatDon't play games with tomorrow.
Okay, ask him to come into yourlife, forgive you of your sin,
fill you with his Holy Spiritand live through you.
Hey, then this will apply toyou.

(24:02):
Anyway, I just wanted toencourage everybody because I
don't know, man, it's.
Oh, the world can beat us down.
Life can beat us down.
We need to be encouragedbecause we are children of the
King.
Ain't no reason for anybody tobe stressing out.
We need to be happy.
Come on, praise the Lord.

(24:25):
Lift up some praise.
If you're stressing out andthat's all the time we got.
I'm out of time already.
I'm ready to just startpreaching, but until next week,
and we got something special foryou next week.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shineupon you and the Lord be
gracious to you.
The Lord lift up hiscountenance upon you and give

(24:48):
you peace.