R,T,P...
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." (Phil. 4:6)
Substitute whatever word you wish for "anxious", as fitting. Whether it's fear, worry, concern, grumble, or fret, they all reflect a position of discomfort or dis-contentedness about a situation. It seems a battle of control, doesn't it? We, inherently, as humans, desire to control to the point where we become anxious about outcomes being favorable or not. I encourage us to give up control before it leads to anxiety. Anxiety indicates a lack of trust.
Trust must be arrived at in this transaction described in Philippians 4. The transaction is between two parties of ourselves and God. It represents the communication loop, where we, as the sender of the message, are to offer up our requests in prayer to God. I believe we are to send our anxieties about the situation with the message. Unfortunately, we hold on to them more often than not. The Word teaches us to cast our cares and anxieties on the Lord for Him to burden the load. Since this is a "give and take" transaction, the Receiver (God) receives our message, and responds according to His sovereign wisdom on our behalf. We have to trust that first, He has indeed heard our requests, and second, that He is completely good and wants to bless us with the perfect response in His perfect timing. So, as we send our prayers to Him, we also send the anxieties about the outcomes and let them go. God, in return, gives us peace, as we will look at next week. Yes, a result of this prayerful transaction is the peace of God. Do we have it? As we empty ourselves of our burdensome concerns, let us fill up that void with the peace of God and be content, knowing He has heard our cries and is going to send the right response. That's good stuff right there.
We can add thanksgiving because we know He will send the right answer and it will be good for us.
We can actually thank Him ahead of time, in faith. It's an extension of that full-hearted trust.
I think one thing that might help is to cultivate more of a heavenly mindset. This earthly existence just ain't it, folks! This is but a very temporary and short time period to endure and thrive in until we step into eternity with our God. We should allow the hope of heaven to permeate our perspectives to help us in our times of need. Again, we are headed to the fruit of peace next week, and after this passage in Philippians comes a whole paragraph of positivity. May we keep heaven in mind. It helps to know that we win in the end. Relax. Make the most of this short time here.
One element of our fretting over situations is leaving Jesus out of the equation. Let's not ever count Him out. Don't ever give up on Him coming through on our behalf. He is faithful to His people. We become anxious when we are afraid He won't come through or give us the response we hope for. I'm reminded of the little boy with the two fish and five biscuits. He offered all he had. And look what Jesus did with that! Add Jesus into your formula when you're calculating the possibilities in your situations and circumstances. Don't limit what He can do. Let's put our faith in Christ alone.
That's the situation the widow in Luke 18 was in. She suffered through a lengthy time period of need and frustration. The unjust judge suffered from her continual persistence and pestering, I'm sure! He finally relented and her situation was bettered in her favor. Jesus concludes this story with the question, "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the Earth?" I pray we take this question personally and consider how we might prove our faith to be genuine by the actions we take. One of which is to decide to truly not be anxious about anything, but instead, present our requests to God and receive His peace in place of our burdens.
