Philippians
4:6-7
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in
everything, 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.”
If we knew and actually applied these two verses
on a regular basis, our lives would be radically transformed. Far too many of
us carry worry on top of worry…so much so that the weight of these worries
almost crushes us. I recently asked the college students I work with to write
down every single thing that they were worried about. The result was that they
actually became…more worried. It was easy for them to suppress all of the vague
worries that were floating around in their heads; it was terrifying to actually
write them down, because then those worries became so much more real. And then
with the reality of everything that they worried about written down in front of
them, they saw these verses and worried about how much they were worrying.
But thankfully this passage gives us an incredible
road map to a life lived for God that is free from the crushing burden of
anxiety. In just two verses, Paul gives us a prohibition against worry, a
prescription for not worrying, and a promise for when we do let go of our
fears. And the prohibition, the prescription, and the promise hold a powerful
key to persevering in the Christian life.
The
Prohibition
The prohibition is simple. Do not be anxious about
anything. Do not worry. There are no qualifications to this statement. The size
of the problem we worry about is not a reason to justify worrying. The amount of
money at stake is not a reason to justifying worrying. And the people involved,
no matter how powerful they are or how messy and problematic they make a
situation, are never reasons to justifying worrying. As Christians we should
not be crippled by fear.
Now in affirming Paul’s prohibition without
qualifications I do realize that people do struggle with such things as
clinical anxiety and depression. These are very real medical issues, and it is
sad that some in the church have written off anxiety and depression as simply
people having a lack of faith. There are good treatments for anxiety and
depression, both in terms of therapy and medicine, and we should encourage
those treatments for those who need them. As a former pastor of mine once
asked, “Is there any difference between medicine from the neck down and
medicine from the neck up?” The answer is no, and Christians should not be
shamed for their need to undergo such treatments. The benefit of such
treatments is that they bring an individual to a place where they can take and
apply this passage. Treatment does not do away with anxiety, it manages
anxiety. It allows an individual to come to a place where he or she can completely
focus on God’s Word, and apply this verse along with everyone else.
Therefore we can say that even clinical anxiety or
depression, as difficult and debilitating as they can be, are not
qualifications by which we can ignore this command to stop worrying. All of us
face anxieties in life. All of us need to stop worrying. And whereas some of us
need prescriptions from our doctors, all of us need the prescription from God’s
Word to stop worrying.
The
Prescription
The prescription is almost as simple as the
prohibition: “…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God.” Instead of worrying, pray. As D. A. Carson
notes, “I have yet to meet a chronic worrier who enjoys an excellent prayer
life.” Now I have had people over the years tell me that they have been
praying, and yet they still worry. In that situation, either something is wrong
with the Scriptures, or something is wrong with an individual’s prayer life.
And given our confidence in the Scriptures, let me suggest two areas where our
prayer lives are often deficient:
First, pray about everything. Paul says “but in
everything…” So we should be in prayer about everything that we face and
encounter as we go through our day. Do we pray about everything throughout our
day, or do we only pray in moments of crisis when our anxiety is skyrocketing?
In seminary I received two incredible tips about having a thriving prayer life:
1) Ask God for everything. Everything. Big, small, important, seemingly
trivial. Ask God for everything. And 2) turn all of your thoughts into a
conversation with God. When you are talking with a friend, talk to God about
your conversation. When you go into work, talk to God about that day and the
work you have to do. When you’re spending time with friends and family and you’re
thinking about the pile of unfinished homework you have, talk to God about that
pile of homework and ask him for wisdom regarding time management. And when you
get cut off on the freeway, talk to God about your frustrations. Praying about
everything will orient us more towards God. Praying about everything will help
us to better see difficult situations from God’s perspective (and God is not
worried about the things we are worried about!). And praying about everything
will help us to have God’s priorities, not our own. (and when you think about
it, so much of our worry is because our priorities are not in line with God’s!).
Pray about everything.
Second, pray with thanksgiving. As we are to pray
about everything, Paul is equally clear that we are to pray with thanksgiving.
This may seem counterintuitive, especially when there is seemingly nothing in a
stressful situation to be thankful for. But there are always things we can be
thankful for. We can be thankful that God is in control and that he is working
in this stressful situation for our good (Romans 8:28). We can be thankful for
how valuable we are to God (Psalm 139:14), which interestingly is the reason
our Lord gave for not worrying (Matthew 6:25-34). We can be thankful that we
have an opportunity to glorify God in the difficult situations that we face
(Isaiah 26:8), and we can be thankful that even our suffering can be used by
God to further the gospel (Philippians 1:12). And we can always be thankful
that God loved us and sent his Son to die for us (1 John 4:10). It is possible
to offer fearful prayers to God. It is much more difficult to offer ongoing, continual,
thankful prayers to God and still be fearful. Praying about everything and
praying with thanksgiving helps us to lay down our worry and instead obey Paul’s
command in verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always.”
The Promise
What this leads us to is the promise of this
passage, and that is when we pray about everything with thanksgiving, the peace
of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Note that the promise
is not the wiping away of the circumstances that caused us worry in the first
place. The promise is peace. A deep, lasting, supernatural peace. The peace we
so often look for (and indeed the only peace the world really knows) is a kind
of peace that comes when a tension has been resolved, or a difficult situation
that caused us to worry went away. And we should certainly be thankful for
those times where that happens. But God’s peace that guards our hearts and
minds allows us to not worry even when (and especially when) the tension is not
resolved. The situation that caused us to worry before could remain the exact
same, and yet we don’t have to worry because of God’s peace guarding us. It is
always helpful to remember that Paul did not write these words from a beach in
a care free tropical paradise, he wrote them from prison in Rome. Just like
Paul, we don’t have to wait for our circumstances to improve to stop worrying,
we can experience God’s supernatural peace now.
This all seems simple. It seems too good to be
true. But God’s Word is either true or it isn’t. So what are you worrying
about? How long is your list of worries that you have been suppressing? What is
keeping you from having the deep, thriving prayer life that allows you to give
all of you worries to God? And are you looking for circumstantial peace, or God’s
peace? In order to persevere in the Christian life, stop worrying. Start
praying. And receive God’s peace.
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