Anxiety is a growing problem in modern Britain. In 2013, 8.2 million people were diagnosed with some sort of serious anxiety problem. In any given week in England, 4.4% of the population experiences anxiety that is serious enough to seek professional help.
The chances are that a good number of us are feeling worried this morning. You may not have been to the doctor about it, but that does not mean the anxiety is not real. Health issues. Exams. Schooling. Your children’s schooling. England’s chances in the European Union. England’s changes in the European Championships. There’s a lot to worry about in life.
For a few combined services now, we’ve been looking at this short reading from Philippians chapter 4. Paul’s wrapping up his letter to them. And he has some final instructions. These verses are anchored in this letter – these verses wouldn’t belong anywhere else in the New Testament. But they’re also general – they’re traits you should see in any healthy Christian church anywhere in the world.
We’ve looked at the first two. The command to be joyful – that was last November. And the command to be gentle – that was in January.
And today we come to verses 5 and 6. And you’ll see that he opens with these words: “Do not be anxious about anything.”
That’s today’s message: Don’t worry.
That might not be a particularly welcome message. September 1988. Bobby McFerrin. “Here’s a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don’t worry, be happy. In every life we have some trouble. When you worry you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.”
Either you like unaccompanied reggae, or you don’t. But it’s popularity was down to the words which matched the easy-going style of the music. It’s sheer escapism. Delightful rubbish. No matter how bad your problems are, pretend they’re not there, and at least you’ll feel better for a few minutes.
If that’s what Paul’s saying here, we don’t want to know. Surely the Bible has more to say than just telling us to put our heads in the sand.
Sometimes, we can become protective about our anxiety. We nurse it. We don’t want anyone to take it away from us. Life is worrying! I have a right to be worried. How dare Paul, or James the vicar, tell me not to be anxious. What does the apostle know about the pressures in my life?
Well, before we dismiss this totally out of hand, we’d better have a look and see what he has to say. After all, if there was something in this, wouldn’t it be most welcome? Wouldn’t we love the idea of a life where we have no need to worry.
As we do so, let’s be clear. Paul does not have his head in the clouds. Or in the sand. He wrote this from prison. Any day now, he would find out the outcome. Would he be released, or would he be executed? He genuinely didn’t know. If that’s not something to get your heartbeat up, put you into a sweat and leave you feeling dizzy, then what is?
And it’s not just Paul. Look back at chapter 1, verse 29: “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.” He doesn’t go into details, but the Philippian Christians are going through the mill as well.
It’s this Paul, writing to these Philippians, who says not to worry about anything.
So what’s the key?
Well, as you look ahead, you see that his solution is to pray. Once again, let me get in before you roll your eyes. Paul’s not about to say: “Just pray, and everything will be OK”. Stay with him. He’s not that simplistic. What he has to say about prayer does impact the problem of anxiety, the problem of worry. But we need to let Paul explain how.
So let’s see what he says here about prayer.
3 things:
Pray in every situation
Firstly, pray in every situation. Pray in every situation.
That’s there in verse 6: “In every situation”
Now, that needs saying.
Sometimes, we don’t pray about a situation, because we feel the situation is too small to need to pray about it. We can manage.
A small child is trying to cut out some shapes, and stick them with Pritt Stick to make a collage. An adult looks over their shoulder: “Do you want some help with that, or can you manage?” “I’ll manage,” comes the reply.
A Christian is going through life, one day at a time, facing various challenges, that don’t seem too difficult. Nothing to make a fuss about. “Mustn’t grumble!” God looks over our shoulder: “Do you want some help with that, or can you manage?” “I’ll manage”, we reply.
So it’s only when the church hall plans have been turned down twice that the vicar writes in his annual report that we should be praying about this.
How wrong that is! If we don’t pray because a situation seems too small, we’re suggesting God does not care. But nothing is too small for God to care about it. “In every situation,” says Paul.
But other times, we don’t pray about a situation because it feels too big. 276 girls kidnapped from a Nigerian boarding school in April 2014. Seemingly lost in the dense forests. What could God do to help in such a situation. An earthquake in Ecuador, 7.8 on the Richter scale. 7000 buildings destroyed. 661 people killed. 6200 people injured. What could God do in such a situation.
How wrong that is! If we don’t pray because a situation seems too big, we’re suggesting God lacks the power to help. But nothing is too big for it to outwit God. “In every situation”, says Paul.
I think this is the reason why Paul compounds the words for prayer in these verses. There are 3 main words for prayer in the New Testament. Elsewhere in Philippians, he chooses one, and he sticks with it. Here, he uses all 3 words. They’re tripping over each other in the sentence. “In every situation, by prayer and petition… present your requests to God.”
These are not three different types of prayer. They’re just 3 different words for prayer. And by using all 3 Paul is stressing his point. He’s getting his language to make the biggest splash it can. At all times. In all circumstances. In every situation. Pray.
Pray in every situation.
Pray with thanksgiving
Second, pray with thanksgiving. Pray with thanksgiving.
This also comes in verse 6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving…”
This is what sets Christian prayer apart from other prayer.
Every human being on the planet has the basic idea that there is a God, that we owe him allegiance, and that he can help us.
It’s true: Some people are in denial about this. They’re experts at suppressing something they know deep down to be true: There is a creator God out there. Admit it or not, we’re born with the instinct, the ability to go “wow” – there is a God.
This is why everyone prays before exams. Before a driving test. Before a loved one goes in for an operation. It’s instinctive to turn to God.
But Christians have something extra. We don’t only know from the creation that there is a God. We don’t only know from our gut that there is a God. We’ve had God step into the light and speak to us. In the person of his Son. In the pages of the Bible.
So in human language we’ve heard the voice of God. And what God says is that he loves his people, he blesses his people. He wants us to trust him so that we are numbered among his people. He wants us to know just how blessed we are to be among his people.
So we can know that God loved us enough to send Jesus to die for our sins. We can know that we are adopted as sons and daughters in God’s family. We can be sure that God loves to hear our voices in prayer, because he is our Father and we are his children. We can enjoy the truth that God has given his Holy Spirit to live within our hearts – to change us, to assure us of God’s love, to make us more like Jesus, to be with us wherever we are.
How blessed we are! Truly. And it’s this God we get to come to in prayer. The God who has blessed us in this way.
And so our prayers are soaked in thankfulness. Just look at the way Paul himself prays. Most of his letters start with a prayer for the people he’s writing to. Philippians does. But always with thankfulness at the beginning and the end. Always mindful of God’s blessings in Christ.
Some people are reluctant to pray for specific things. They don’t want to dump a shopping list on God. Here’s the answer: Pray with thanksgiving. We’re not trying to twist things out of a reluctant deity. We’re approaching our Father in heaven. We’re coming to the one who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We’re coming to God as his dearly loved children, his prize possession.
Which is why it would be a good habit to cultivate, if you don’t have it already, for every prayer to begin with the words “thank you”. Given what I’m about to pray for, what are the appropriate things to thank him for as I come to pray on this occasion.
Pray with thanksgiving.
Pray by leaving things with God
And third: Pray by leaving things with God. Pray by leaving things with God.
That’s the very end of verse 6: “Present your requests to God.”
Do you ever wonder? Why do I need to present my request to him? Doesn’t he know what I need already?
Well, indeed!
In fact, the rest of the Bible drives you to ask exactly that. There is one other place in the Bible where we are told not to worry, to trust God. That is Matthew chapter 6. In Matthew chapter 6 Jesus says this. Verse 8: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” And verse 31: “Do not worry [verse 32]… for your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”
If God knows what we need, why do we need to present him our requests? Why do we need to lay things out before God? Why do we need to leave things with God?
Here’s why? The point is not that we get to inform God of something he didn’t already know about. That’s not why we pray. We pray to bring a situation before God. A situation he already knows better than we do. And to consciously entrust the situation to his loving care. To leave it with him.
The point is not that he now knows. The point is that we now know he knows. The point is that we’ve told him. We’ve trusted him. So we can leave it in his capable hands.
I can remember the stress of preparing for our wedding day. The day itself was tremendously happy and joyful. But the build-up was stressful. So much to do. In such a short time. On top of all the other pressures of life. And I can remember quite clearly when I rang up my best man. I had a list of a dozen jobs that needed doing before the wedding. I couldn’t see how I’d get half of them done. And he just said, “Leave it with me”. Two days later, I got an email. He’d done the lot. Cleared the list.
That’s what God invites us to do. “In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
We Christians easily fall into one of two opposite errors. One is to see prayer as the chance to dump our shopping list on God. Thankfulness is the antidote to that. But then we fall for the opposite error. By all means we thank God. But we daren’t ask him for anything. Not anything specific. That would be presumptuous.
God invites us to come to him, thankfully, and lay our requests before him. That means simply coming, and asking him to intervene, to act. With specific requests.
Just saying “We pray for Aunt Joan” is not praying for Aunt Joan. But this is: “Please give Aunt Joan the strength she needs for today. Please would the government soldiers look in the right places, and find those Nigerian girls. Please help the emergency services in Ecuador to find the people who are still trapped.”
We lay our requests before him. And then we leave them with him. We know that our needs are in his capable hands.
Pray by leaving things with God.
Peace the Guard
In every situation. With thanksgiving. We pray. We leave our requests with God.
Then so what? Well that’s verse 7. “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
God’s peace will guard you.
Which is not saying that, now you’ve prayed, you’ll feel much better. You’ll feel at peace.
Imagine you’re extremely wealthy, so you hire a security guard to guard your house. Muscle. “Now we’ll be alright,” you think. “His strength will keep my house safe”. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly grow muscles like his, and end up on the front of a magazine. No: It means he will keep you safe. And because he is strong, his strength is what looks after you.
Or imagine you hire an accountant. Someone to take a look at what goes in, what goes out, what taxes you have to pay. See if they can save you some money. She’s a complete brainbox. You hope her head for figures will save you some money. What does that mean? Does it mean that, now you’ve hired her, you’ll suddenly become good at maths? If you retook your Maths GCSE, you’d pass this time. You’ll be able to look over your finances, and see all the savings you were missing? No, she’s the brainbox, not you. The hope is that she will save you some money. And because she’s good with figures, it’s her head for figures that will save you the money.
“The peace of God will keep you safe,” says Paul. What does that mean? Does it mean that, now you’ve prayed, you’ll start to feel all at peace, and so you’ll be safe? No. It’s God who’s guarding you. And because he’s a God of peace, it’s his peace that will keep you safe.
God is totally at peace. He can see the end from the beginning. Nothing makes God worried. Nothing makes God anxious. He’s so powerful he never fails to achieve anything he sets out to do. He’s so wise, he never gets caught off guard. God is not the least bit stressed about what school your children might get into next year. He’s not at all worried about your exam results. The EU referendum doesn’t lose him a wink of sleep. It’s all in hand.
And the God of peace will guard you.
It’s a picture the Philippian Christians would have known well. The city of Philippi was a Roman colony, a kind of outpost of Rome in that corner of the empire. There would have been Roman soldiers stationed there to guard that section of their empire. A Roman Garrison. They’d have been used to seeing the Roman troops, stationed there to guard their city.
The word used here for guarding the Christians is the same word as the Roman Garrison. If your heart, your mind, your life, is a city that comes under attack. From hard times. From doubts. From temptations. There is a garrison standing guard over you. It is the living God. The God of peace. The God of perfect peace.
And here’s where we come back to the question about anxiety. Praying is not some magic experience. A mystic encounter. Turn to God in prayer, and some soothing force makes everything feel better.
But when we pray, we are leaving things with the God who loves us, the God who is powerful, with God our Father. We are leaving things with the God of peace. And when we do that, the God of peace stands guard over us. He doesn’t always tell us his plans. He doesn’t always answer our prayers in the ways we think he should. But he knows what he’s doing, he is there, he’s standing guard. And he’s the God of peace.
And so we learn, little by little, to hand things over to him. And we learn, little by little, that we’ve left them with the God of peace. And the more that becomes our reaction when we feel afraid, worried, anxious, the more we’ll find God starts to come alongside us in our anxious moments. The more we can trust that we’re in safe hands. Our hearts and our minds are safe.
Conclusion
So don’t be anxious. Pray. In every situation. With thanksgiving. Leave things with God. And he’ll look after you.