Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action
Paul now turns to a third area where we need discipline:
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Php 4.6-7).
People come in all varieties. Some are pretty self-confident; they think they can deal with whatever comes down the pike. Don’t need any help, thanks. I got this.
But if the truth be known, even those people worry. They think about how they’re going to deal with this issue or that, and even though they don’t want to ask anybody else for help, they still spend time on the mental merry-go-round, trying to figure out the next step.
And for others, it’s even more difficult. Worry becomes anxiety, and fear dominates their thinking.
This is the human condition.
And if we humans are merely the peak of evolutionary development, with no one higher to look to, then we’re doomed to a lifetime of anxiety.
But we’re not, and we’re not.
There is a higher throne. And Paul points us there.
Don’t worry about anything, he says.
What? Don’t worry about where the rent’s coming from? About progressive degenerative disease? About broken relationships? About societal ills? About nuclear holocaust?
That’s just crazy.
No, my friend. It’s crazy only if we’re all there is.
But there is a God, and he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And further, he loves us, and he invites us to bring our anxieties to him and leave them there.
He can provide the rent money, and grace to face the physical ravages of time, and relational healing, and societal peace. And he can prevent nuclear holocaust, in his good will.
Bring your requests.
I note that Paul returns to his earlier theme of thanksgiving, or rejoicing. How can we be thankful even as we recount our troubles at the throne?
Because God hears, and he responds, and always in a way that is good and wise, wiser even than the “solutions” we can suggest to him. Beyond all that we can ask or think.
Paul follows his imperative with a promise. If we’ll do what he says, then God will bring peace to our troubled hearts—peace, he says, that surpasses all understanding.
I used to think that that meant that it’s so wonderful that we can’t understand it. But I don’t think that’s it. It surpasses understanding; when our understanding has taken us as far as it can, and it runs out of gas, the peace of God takes over and keeps us going, as far as we need to go. We find that we don’t need to know it all, to understand everything that God is doing. We know him, we trust him, and we just keep going.
Paul adds one last thought. This peace he says, is not passive; it’s active. And the verb he chooses is instructive: it guards our hearts and minds. You know, that place where the anxiety comes from? The wellspring of all our fears? The peace of God stands as a sentinel at the door, muscular and armed, and it denies entry to the dangerous stuff.
So we have a choice.
We can give in to the anxiety, trying to work things out for ourselves, despite the fact that there are all kinds of things that we don’t know and can’t do.
Or we can trust the sentinel standing outside the door of our hearts, as we work diligently and wisely during the day and sleep well at night.
That shouldn’t be a difficult decision.
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