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. – Philippians 4:6-7
I know this verse is used constantly in reference to how often we should pray, but look at the verse again. I think it’s fascinating, because it clearly talks about intercession and the effect of intercession.
Most people (including me until like a month ago) think the point of intercession is to change the world around them or bring God’s grace, love, or power into their lives. That’s really cool and all, but that’s not what the verse says. It says that the result of presenting your requests to God is peace and a guarded heart. It’s amazing – the purpose of intercession isn’t for other people, it’s for our own hearts!
I think this brings up some really interesting points. Getting rid of anxiety (v6) and its cousins stress and worry is apparently so important that we need to pray about everything we are anxious about. Why? Because to be worried or stressed about something is, frankly, not trusting in God to get us through the situation or circumstance. Worry automatically takes our eyes off of God and on to our present circumstance. How can we deal with heavenly things when we can’t even trust God for our earthly things?
I also think it’s absolutely fascinating that it’s the peace of God that guards us… As long as we have peace about a situation, Satan can’t do anything to us. It’s just like anything big and scary – it looses all of its power when we don’t react. For instance, I used to be afraid of spiders. When one showed up, I would drop everything I was doing in order to make sure I didn’t get bit. It was only after the spider was gone that I could get any work done. It didn’t matter what I was doing – if a spider walked in, that became top priority and I lost focus on everything else. Now, anything under 4 inches doesn’t bother me – I can still worship, pray, or do anything else while that spider is there. That spider is just like life events, except the life events can sidetrack you for months at a time.
It’s fascinating – if we can keep our peace no matter what gets thrown at us, God’s won in our lives. Think of Jesus’s disciples in the boat when the storm came and Jesus was sleeping. Jesus told the disciples they had little faith for bringing their petition (save us!) to Him – bringing petitions to Jesus; doesn’t that sound a lot like prayer? That begs the question, if praying was little faith, what would great faith be in that situation? Well, Jesus had great faith and He was sleeping, completely at peace. I’m not trying to say praying is bad, I’m trying to say that the point isn’t whether your prayer gets answered or not, but rather how you deal with the situation.
It makes so much sense! If you believed in God a little and a crisis came up, you start praying. Even non-Christians do that! But if you really believed God loved you and was going to take care of you, you would be totally at peace! After all, being at peace after a crisis has passed is easy, but being at peace in the middle of a crisis takes genuine faith! Almost none of us start out at that place when a crisis comes, but Philippians 4:6-7 makes it pretty clear that the point of praying about a circumstance is to get you to that place!
Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to walk into any situation with peace because you know your God will protect you? That’s the goal!
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