AVOIDING ANXIETY THROUGH PRAYER
Just as Matthew 6 is Jesus’ great statement on worry, Philippians 4 is the apostle Paul’s charter on how to avoid anxiety. Those passages are the most comprehensive portions of Scripture dealing with our topic and therefore are foundational to understanding how God feels about anxiety and why He feels that way. The teaching is clear, compelling, and direct. In Philippians 4:6–9, Paul issued a series of commands:
Be anxious for nothing, 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 comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Paul straightaway said not to worry, but he doesn’t leave us there. His instruction helps us fill the vacuum by directing us toward positive steps: right praying, right thinking, and right action. The best way to eliminate a bad habit is to replace it with a good one, and few habits are as bad as worrying. The foremost way to avoid anxiety is through prayer. Right thinking and action are the next logical steps, but it all begins with prayer.
React to Problems with Thankful Prayer
Paul said, “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). This teaching tells us how to pray with gratitude. The Greek terms Paul used refer to specific petitions made to God in the midst of difficulty.
Instead of praying to God with feelings of doubt, discouragement, or discontent, we are to approach Him with a thankful attitude before we utter even one word. We can do that with sincerity when we realize that God promises not to allow anything to happen to us that will be too much for us to bear (1 Cor. 10:13), to work out everything for our good in the end (Rom. 8:28), and to “perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish” us in the midst of our suffering (1 Peter 5:10).
These are key principles for living the Christian life. Go beyond memorizing them to letting them be the grid through which you automatically interpret all that happens to you. Know that all your difficulties are within God’s purpose, and thank Him for His available power and promises.
Being thankful will release you from fear and worry. It is a tangible demonstration of trusting your situation to God’s sovereign control. And it is easy to do, since there are so many blessings to be thankful for: knowing that God will supply all our needs (Phil. 4:19), that He stays closely in touch with our lives (Ps. 139:3), that He cares about us (1 Peter 5:7), that all power belongs to Him (Ps. 62:11), that He is making us more and more like Christ (Rom. 8:29; Phil. 1:6), and that no detail escapes Him (Ps. 147:5).
The prophet Jonah reacted with thankful prayer when a great fish swallowed him (Jonah 2:1, 9). If you suddenly found yourself swimming in a fish’s gastric juices, how do you think you’d react? Maybe you’d cry out, “God, what are You doing? Where are You? Why is this happening to me?” If there were ever an excuse for panic, surely this would be it. But no, Jonah reacted differently:
I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me.… You had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.… I have been expelled from Your sight.… Water encompassed me to the point of death, the great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains.… While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving.… Salvation is from the LORD. (vv. 2–9)
Although Jonah had his weaknesses, he reflected profound spiritual stability in this prayer. He was confident of God’s ability to deliver him if He so chose. In the same way the peace of God will help us be stable if we react to our circumstances, however unusual or ordinary, with thankful prayer instead of anxiety. That’s the promise of Philippians 4:7: “The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This precious verse promises inner calm and tranquillity to believers who pray with a thankful attitude. Notice, however, it doesn’t promise what the answer to our prayers will be.
This peace “surpasses all comprehension,” which speaks of its divine origin. It transcends human intellect, analysis, and insight. No human counselor can give it to you because it’s a gift from God in response to gratitude and trust.
The real challenge of Christian living is not to eliminate every uncomfortable circumstance from our lives, but to trust our sovereign, wise, good, and powerful God in the midst of every situation. Things that might trouble us such as the way we look, the way others treat us, or where we live or work can actually be sources of strength, not weakness.
Jesus said to His disciples, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). As disciples of Christ, we need to accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and allow God to do His perfect work in us. Our Lord will give us His peace as we confidently entrust ourselves to His care.
The peace of God “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). John Bunyan’s allegory The Holy War illustrates how this peace guards the believer’s heart from anxiety, doubt, fear, and distress. In it Mr. God’s-Peace was appointed to guard the city of Mansoul. As long as Mr. God’s-Peace ruled, Mansoul enjoyed harmony, happiness, joy, and health. However, Prince Emmanuel (Christ) went away because Mansoul grieved him. Consequently, Mr. God’s-Peace resigned his commission, and chaos resulted.
The believer who doesn’t live in the confidence of God’s sovereignty will lack God’s peace and be left to the chaos of a troubled heart. But our confident trust in the Lord will allow us to thank Him in the midst of trials because we have God’s peace on duty to protect our hearts.
During World War II, an armed German freighter picked up a missionary whose ship had been torpedoed. He was put into the hold. For a while he was too terrified to even close his eyes. Sensing the need to adjust his perspective, he told of how he got through the night: “I began communing with the Lord. He reminded me of His word in the 121st Psalm: ‘My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he … shall neither slumber nor sleep’ (vv. 2–4 KJV).… So I said, ‘Lord there isn’t really any use for both of us to stay awake tonight. If You are going to keep watch, I’ll thank Thee for some sleep!’”1 He replaced his fear and anxiety with thankful prayer, and the peace of God that resulted enabled him to sleep soundly. You too will enjoy peace and rest when you cultivate the habit of looking to God with a grateful attitude.
Focus on Godly Virtues
Prayer is our chief means of avoiding anxiety. After Paul said not to be anxious (Phil. 4:6), he added two complete sentences specifying how we’re to pray and what the benefits will be. The English text, reflective of the Greek, launches into a new paragraph on godly thinking and practices. Philippians 4 is often oversimplified and misrepresented as a mere grocery list on how to deal with worry, but it is much more than that. As believers, we’re to leave the sin of worry behind with our prayers and gradually become different people through new ways of thinking and acting. Let’s now explore these next steps beyond worry.
Paul wrote these words: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8). As mentioned earlier, we are the products of our thinking. According to Proverbs 23:7, “As [a person] thinks within himself, so he is.” Unfortunately, many psychologists believe an individual can find stability by recalling his past sins, hurts, and abuses. That kind of thinking has infiltrated Christianity. The apostle Paul, however, said to focus only on what is right and honorable, not on the sins of darkness (see Eph. 5:12).
How We Think
To give you some background, let’s survey what Scripture says about our thinking patterns before, at, and after salvation.
Describing unredeemed humanity, Paul wrote: “As they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind” (Rom. 1:28). Once, our minds were corrupt. Worse, our minds were also blind, for “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. 4:4). As a result, our minds were engaged in futile thoughts (Eph. 4:17). Indeed, prior to salvation, people’s minds are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them” (v. 18). Since the mind of the unbeliever is corrupt, it doesn’t choose what is good; since it is spiritually blind, it doesn’t know what is good; since its thoughts are futile, it doesn’t perform what is good; and since it is ignorant, it doesn’t even know what evil it is doing. What a tragic train of thought!
The ability to think clearly and correctly is a tremendous blessing from God. It all begins with the gospel, which is “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16). The Lord uses the gospel to illumine the mind of the unbeliever. In fact, Paul said that faith comes by hearing about Christ (Rom. 10:17). Salvation begins in the mind as an individual comes to realize the seriousness of sin and Christ’s atoning work on his or her behalf. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). Salvation requires an intelligent response: Trust in the revealed truth of God, which proves itself in life to be true and reasonable.
Recall that Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Matt. 6:26). Martyn Lloyd-Jones, commenting on that verse, explained:
Faith, according to our Lord’s teaching … is primarily thinking.… We must spend more time in studying our Lord’s lessons in observation and deduction. The Bible is full of logic, and we must never think of faith as something purely mystical. We do not just sit down in an armchair and expect marvelous things to happen to us. That is not Christian faith. Christian faith is essentially thinking. Look at the birds, think about them, and draw your deductions. Look at the grass, look at the lilies of the field, consider them.…
Faith, if you like, can be defined like this: It is a man insisting upon thinking when everything seems determined to bludgeon and knock him down.… The trouble with the person of little faith is that, instead of controlling his own thought, his thought is being controlled by something else, and, as we put it, he goes round and round in circles. That is the essence of worry.… That is not thought; that is the absence of thought, a failure to think.2
Some people assume worry is the result of too much thinking. Actually, it’s the result of too little thinking in the right direction. If you know who God is and understand His purposes, promises, and plans, it will help you not to worry.
Faith isn’t psychological self-hypnosis or wishful thinking, but a reasoned response to revealed truth. When we in faith embrace Christ as our Lord and Savior, our minds are transformed. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, renewing us; and we receive a new mind or way of thinking. Divine and supernatural thoughts inject our human thought patterns.
“The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God,” said Paul, but we as believers “have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:11–12). In other words, because the Holy Spirit indwells us, the very thoughts of God are available to us.
Since we still live in a fallen world, however, our renewed minds need ongoing cleansing and refreshment. Jesus said that God’s chief agent for purifying our thinking is His Word (John 15:3). Paul reiterated that concept many times:
• Romans 12:1–2: “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
• Ephesians 4:23: “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”
• Colossians 3:10: “Put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.”
• 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.”
The New Testament calls us to the mental discipline of right thinking. Paul said, “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). In addition, Peter said, “Prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13).
Think how often Paul said in his letters, “I would not … that ye should be ignorant” (Rom. 11:25; 1 Cor. 10:1; 2 Cor. 1:8; 1 Thess. 4:13 KJV) and “know ye not” (Rom. 6:3, 16; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 13:5 KJV). He was concerned that we think rightly. Jesus Himself often used the term translated “think” to help His listeners have the right focus (Matt. 5:17; 18:12; 21:28; 22:42).
What We Should Think About
What is that right focus? Dwelling on “whatever is true … honorable … right … pure … lovely … of good repute” (Phil. 4:8).
Truthful Things
We will find what is true in God’s Word. Jesus said, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17; see also Ps. 119:151). The truth is also in Christ Himself—“just as truth is in Jesus,” said Paul (Eph. 4:21). Dwelling on what is true necessitates meditating on God’s Word and “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of [our] faith” (Heb. 12:2).
Noble Things
The Greek word that is translated “honorable” refers to what is noble, dignified, and worthy of respect. We are to dwell on whatever is worthy of awe and adoration—the sacred as opposed to the profane.
Righteous Things
The term “right” speaks of righteousness. Our thoughts are to be in perfect harmony with the eternal, unchanging, divine standard of our Holy God as revealed in Scripture. Right thinking is always consistent with God’s absolute holiness.
Pure Things
“Pure” refers to something morally clean and undefiled. We are to dwell on what is clean, not soiled.
Gracious Things
The Greek term translated “lovely” occurs only here in the New Testament and means “pleasing” or “amiable.” The implication is that we are to focus on whatever is kind or gracious.
Praiseworthy Things
“Honorable” predominantly refers to something worthy of veneration by believers, but “good repute” refers more to what is reputable in the world at large. This term includes universally praised virtues such as courage and respect for others.
In essence Paul was saying, “Since there are so many excellent and worthy things out there, please focus on them.” Focusing on godly virtues will affect what you decide to see (such as television programs, books, or magazines) and say (perhaps to family and those at work). That’s because your thinking affects your desires and behavior.
How does all that lofty teaching apply to fear and anxiety? Jay Adams gave this practical advice:
Whenever you catch your mind wandering back into the forbidden territory (and you can be sure that it will—more frequently at first, until you retrain and discipline it …) change the direction of your thought. Do not allow yourself one conscious moment of such thought. Instead, crisply ask God to help you to refocus upon those things that fit into Paul’s list recorded in Philippians 4:8–9. The attitude must grow within you that says: “So if I have a fear experience, so what? It’s unpleasant, it’s disturbing, but I’ll live through it—at least I always have before.” When you honestly can think this way without becoming anxious, you will know that the change has been made.3
Practice What’s Been Preached
All this godly thinking is to lead to a practical end. Paul put it this way: “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9).
Paul’s words speak of action that’s repetitious or continuous. When we say someone is practicing the violin or something else, we mean that person is working to improve a skill. When we say a doctor or lawyer has a practice, we are referring to his or her professional routine. Similarly, the word here refers to one’s pattern of life or conduct.
God’s Word cultivates the godly attitudes, thoughts, and actions that will keep trials and temptations from overwhelming us. To understand the relationship between the three, consider this analogy: If a police officer sees someone who is about to violate the law, the officer will restrain that person. Similarly, godly attitudes and thoughts produced by the Word act as police officers to restrain the flesh before it commits a crime against the standard of God’s Word. But if they aren’t on duty, they can’t restrain the flesh, and the flesh is free to violate the law of God.
Right attitudes and thoughts must precede right practices. Only spiritual weapons will help in our warfare against the flesh (2 Cor. 10:4). By avoiding anxiety through prayer and making other such attitude adjustments, we can take “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (v. 5).
Pure behavior, in turn, produces spiritual peace and stability. The prophet Isaiah said, “The work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever” (Isa. 32:17). Similarly, James wrote, “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable.… The seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:17–18).
Paul said, “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things” (Phil. 4:9). Paul exemplified the spiritual fruit of peace, joy, humility, faith, and gratitude. He clearly dwelled on what was true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and of good repute. Therefore, he wasn’t embarrassed to tell people who knew him well to practice what they had seen in his life.
Today we have the New Testament as the divine pattern for our conduct. In no way does that mean, however, that those who currently preach, teach, and represent the New Testament are permitted to live any way they want. Even though none of us are apostles, our lives are to be worthy of imitation or we disqualify ourselves from the ministry. Moreover, as believers we are all to prove ourselves “doers of the word, and not merely hearers” (James 1:22). Never expose yourself to the ministry of someone whose lifestyle you can’t respect.
Finally, “the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9), said Paul, who ended on this note because he was addressing the issue of spiritual stability in the midst of trials. It takes us full circle to our original point of avoiding anxiety through prayer. When we follow that practice, “the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard [our] hearts and … minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 7). There’s no better protection from worry than that.
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