“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6 NIV
I love this verse because it makes it sound so easy. Just don’t be anxious. That is so much easier to tell someone else to do than to hear yourself or try to do sometimes. For non-believers, it can be very hard because they are trying to not be anxious, all on their own.
When we struggle with worry and anxiety, we are actually stepping back away from our faith. When we worry, we are trying to figure out how to control the outcome of a situation that we are either in or believe we may be in sometime in the future. The only true control we have over things is the control of how we respond to our own feelings, how we respond to others, and how we respond to the events that are occurring either around us or to us.
We do not have control over what someone else thinks, feels or does. We don’t have control over the situations that are happening around us. We only have control of ourselves and there are times when we don’t have very much control over that. However, the wonderful news is that as believers we are not on our own, we have God to help us. God is right there with us and will give us strength to do things we do not believe we can do, such as not worry or be anxious.
In Philippians 4:6, God, through Paul, has given us the very method that we are to use to calm ourselves, to take our faith and exercise it by giving the worry or anxiety to God. Paul wrote that we are to not be anxious about anything, but in every situation we are to pray. We are to pray and ask God for what we need. There is an extra part in the verse that we may find difficult to do while we are praying and asking God for what we need and that is the part of the verse that says we are to do this with thanksgiving.
Who is thinking about being thankful when they are in the middle of feeling anxious? Not many of us but that is what we are instructed to do, be thankful. What are we to be thankful for? That varies from person to person, but a good place to start is to be thankful that God wants to be and is your God. That He wants to be involved in your life and that He loves you. Those are some very large things to be thankful for. This may be hard to do at times but being purposeful in expressing our thankfulness to God in prayer is a step towards exercising our faith and giving our worries and anxieties to God.
I pray that as you go about your day today, that you are able to express your thankfulness to God for who He is and how much He loves you. Have a great day.