The Bible’s Prescription for Our Anxiety
“do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:6-7
There is perhaps no other passage that is more relevant to the Christian experience today, than Philppians 4:6-7. Anxiety is rampant in our hearts, minds, and lives. This personally has been a battle that I’ve had to fight, and by God’s grace, have had some victory in. It is still a path that I am on in sanctification, and it humbles me frequently. This passage is what I call the Bible’s prescription for anxiety, due to the formatting and combination of the various clauses in the verse. It is straight forward, practical, and easy to understand. Yet, at the same time, it is mysterious, glorious, and difficult to do consistently.
Anything
The first part of this passage hits like a haymaker in the face of my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6). The word “anything” is all inclusive. God says, any single thing, or combination of things, that you can possibly experience anxiety from, should not be causing it. What this tells us is, if we could understand everything the way God does, we as His children, would have no reason to be anxious. This is stated in light of the monumental promise in Romans 8:28 that says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The result of these two verses working together shows us that no matter what circumstances we have found ourselves in before, find ourselves in currently, or will find ourselves in, we as God’s beloved, chosen, and called children, have nothing to fear. There is no pain or suffering ever experienced that does not ultimately work for our eternal good. This applies to everyone who has trusted in Christ, in every circumstance. Its all inclusive.
Everything
It continues “but in everything, by prayer.” This is the second all inclusive statement providing a sharp contrast to the first. This gives us the logical conclusion that will result from the first command. It’s formatted as “Don’t do this, but instead you’ll logically do that.” Every circumstance and aspect of our lives is important to God, that He commands us to pray about them. He wants to hear his children bring all their troubles, blessings, anxieties, hurts, questions, doubts, praises, and every other possible thing in the human realm of experience, to Him. “By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” This lays out two aspects of prayer described in the ACTS acronym. The T and S stand for Thanksgiving and Supplication.
We understand that everything that happens to us is working out for our good. Therefore, no matter the circumstances, we can always be full of not only requests, but thanksgiving as well. When we are anxious that we may lose someone or something, we can be thankful knowing that Philippians 4:19 is true. “And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Another way I put this is, if you don’t have it, you don’t need it right now. This verse says that God is giving us exactly what we need moment by moment. This flows to the conclusion of the third section of this verse.
The Peace of God
We are not only told “don’t do this, do that instead.” We are given the reason and source that drives our anxiety out, and causes an outpouring of prayer and thanksgiving. That is God Himself, and the peace that He gives. The reason and goal behind not being anxious, and having communion with God in everything, is peace. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” There are a few things that I would like to point out about this peace.
The first is that this peace is of God. It brings my mind to the words of Jesus in John 14:27 to his disciples. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” This verse in Philippians and the verse in John are explicitly drawing a difference between peace of the world and the peace of God. The peace of the world is circumstantial. It is based on our perceived experiences and outcomes (which are often the cause of anxiety!), and our control. This peace understands that ultimately God is sovereign over us. Our control is an illusion that we can somehow alter things by worrying about them. Jesus explicitly corrects this through a rhetorical question in Matthew 6:27. “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” Our lack of control is good news. It means that when we, as those who trust in Jesus, trust Him with our future, we can trust Him with every aspect, no matter what happens. If our anxieties come true, we have an eternal hope in Jesus that circumstances are always temporary, even unto death.
This leads to the second remarkable thing about this peace. It is “beyond understanding,” meaning that we do not need to know every aspect of our circumstances to have it. We don’t need to see into the future and know exactly what will happen. We know that our God and Father will be totally in control as He is now. He works “all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). We know that His will is “good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2). John Piper says “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” We can have this peace knowing that those 9,997 things are all for our good in His ultimate culmination of history in the glorification of Christ. There we will, as the answer to the first question “What is the chief end of man?” in the Westminster Larger Catechism says, “Enjoy Him forever.”
The third part of this peace is what it does. This peace “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Our minds and hearts can be known what is throughout Scripture as “the flesh.” What does this peace guard us from? Our hearts and our minds are fallen in our sin. Without the defense of the peace of God, our minds and hearts will fall fully into all anxiety, realizing that our control is lost. Our hearts are “deceptively wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). We need a defense in our battle for peace, against our flesh and against Satan. The paradox of the peace that God gives is that it needs to be fought for through “prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.” God strengthens us to come to Him in prayer with thanksgiving for “everything.”
This is where true peace can come from. The work of God in our lives brings His peace, that is beyond understanding, and guards our hearts and our mind “In Christ Jesus.” This means that we have peace that “all the promises of God find their ‘yes’ in Him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Christ is our peace. We are eternally secure in Him. Nothing can take away His love for those are who are in Him (Romans 8:38-39). Trust in God’s promise that He will guard your heart and mind from anxiety in Him.
