The challenges of life are more than sufficient to give anyone an ulcer. It only seems to get worse as we get older.

It seems to start with concern about growing up, how we look, how we are perceived, and what we plan to do with our lives. We may get to the point where we worry less about ourselves but then tend to get anxiety regarding the welfare of friends, spouses, children, parents, grandchildren, and others. Then there are the ever present concerns about acceptance and advancement in our society in general, the direction of our culture, the welfare and prosperity of successive generations, and the constant dangers from physical and spiritual forces which may work against us. This is more than any of us can bear!

As Paul is finishing up his first conclusion to his letter to the Philippian Christians he exhorts them to be anxious in nothing (Philippians 4:6). They are not to allow anything to cause them to worry. Seems like something far easier to say than it is to do, doesn’t it?

Paul does not leave the Philippians without a solution; instead of being anxious they are to let their requests be made known to God in everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6). Prayer is the way forward: Christians should not presume to hide anything from God since He can see all things (Matthew 10:26-30). We must always make our prayers and requests with thanksgiving so that we do not presume upon God’s past covenant faithfulness and loyalty as Israel did, acting as if every present challenge has become an existential crisis and forgetting all that our God has done for us in making us, saving us, and blessing us in life (e.g. 1 Corinthians 10:1-12). Thus the Philippians were not to be anxious but to take everything to God in prayer.

How is prayer the solution to anxiety? In order to make sense of it we must first recognize what we are really doing when we worry.

As humans we want to feel in control of situations; we do not handle the feeling of powerlessness very well. In a very real way anxiety and worry are the ways in which we attempt to exert control in situations in which we are afraid we have no control. We worry about the decisions others make because we may not have that much influence over them. We are anxious about the future because we do not know what it portends. When we do not have power over anything else we at least have control over our thinking about it: hence, worry.

By telling the Philippian Christians, and by extension us, to take everything to God in prayer, Paul is really telling them and us to put our trust in God and not in ourselves. We are not in control; such is a hard and sobering truth, but it’s reality. As Jesus makes clear, anxiety and worry do not help us in the least; no situation is made better because we worried or were anxious about it (Matthew 6:27). We do better to relinquish what control we think we have to the One who does have control over the heavens and the earth and who seeks to give us good things (Matthew 28:18-19, Romans 8:31-39).

In terms of anxiety and worry we must “let go and let God”: He can handle it, for we cannot. What will come of us? We should entrust ourselves to God in prayer, submitting in faith so that we can be vessels to be used for His purposes and praise. What about our parents or children? Entrust their care to God who watches over them and who can direct their steps. What about the future? The future will have its own trouble; Jesus is Lord now and will be Lord then, and we have no promise of tomorrow anyway (Matthew 6:34, James 4:14). What about the fate of this nation, or the economy, or our culture? Such are as the grass of the field, here today, gone tomorrow; Jesus is Lord (1 Peter 1:24). What about all the forces of evil, sometimes physical but primarily spiritual, which are arrayed against us? He who is in us is greater than he that is in the world (Ephesians 6:12, 1 John 4:4).

Not much has changed over the years; “in nothing be anxious, but in everything let your requests be made known to God” is as easier said than done today as it was when Paul wrote to the Philippians. But he’s right. We do well to take it to heart. May we not find ourselves paralyzed by the anxiety of the challenges surrounding us but in all things entrust ourselves to God in Christ through prayer!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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