Where is your focus and heart? In Phil 4:6-7 it states, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made know to God’ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Anxious means worried, concerned, fearful, uneasy. Yet this says to be anxious about nothing. There is nothing we should be worried or fearful about. Yet God does not stop with telling us not to do something He always gives us a better way.
In place of our worry, concern, or stress we are taught to in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let our request be made known to God. I love how worry about nothing but in everything instead do this. Do what? Prayer and supplication. Supplication is another word for prayer or making a request. Therefore instead of worry, we are to pray. That does not mean we go complaining to God is our prayers about how awful things are. We are to pray with thanksgiving. Some may be in a place where it is hard or difficult to be thankful.
In the book The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom notes how the barracks that the women were staying had flees that would bite them. Her sister, Betsy, thanked God for the fleas because she recalled they were to “give thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Thes 5:18) Corrie was not very thankful for these fleas and wondered how they could be thankful for those fleas. However because of those fleas they held bible studies in the barracks and no one came in to supervise them and it protected the women from abuse.
Hopefully none of you are in this situation where you are thankful for fleas to keep yourself and others protected. Yet even in those circumstances we are to be thankful in our prayers. What are you thankful for today? We often have so much to be thankful of but instead of coming to God in thanks, we come to him with our gripes and complaints. God tells us that we are to be thankful and to pray. When we do that His peace will guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. His peace that surpasses all understanding will be with us.
Jesus spoke, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”(John 14:27 NKJV) This should always be our reminder because we do not have peace the same peace that Jesus had to speak to the storm, heal the sick and speak boldly to religious leaders. Today I pray that you would be thankful for where you are and ask God for the petitions you need. His peace WILL come when we change our focus and heart from one of worry to one of thankfulness.
Good reminder Jamie 😊