Thankful Prayer - Philippians 4:5-7 Series

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Protected by Peace

Under Guard

Imagine late tonight you got a knock on your door, you open it up, and there’s a whole SWAT team in full gear standing outside your house. And the guy in charge tells you, “We’re here to guard your family, so you don’t have to worry.” What would you say? “Guard my family from what? What’s the threat that requires us to be guarded?”

That’s the same question we should be asking when we read Php.4:7, because it talks about something guarding us. We should do what he says to do in v.6, so that we will be protected. God’s special forces will station just outside the door of our inner man and stand guard.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds

The Danger

So what’s the danger we’re being guarded from? That’s in v.6. The peace of God will guard your heart and mind from your own heart and mind. The threat in v.6 that we’re guarded from is anxiety, and anxiety is a product of your own heart and mind. It’s like cancer. Cancer is when your body goes crazy multiplying cells – to the point where your body destroys itself. Anxiety is when your heart and mind go crazy with undirected emotional energy that can destroy the very heart and mind that’s producing the anxiety. And if you want to see how both heart and mind are damaged by anxiety, just look at our case study from last time – Martha.

Mind

Distraction

First, the mind. What kind of effect did Martha’s anxiety have on her thinking?

Luke 10:40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

That’s the damage it does to your mind - distraction. Martha had an opportunity to share a wonderful evening in person with the Son of God – the Creator of the Universe in her living room, and she missed it because she was distracted by vacuuming. She was running out of flour – a broken dish, and she misses out on one of the greatest opportunities to ever take place in human history.

Anxiety dominates your thoughts so you become distracted from what’s most important. The preparations for the meal became more important than the reason for the meal. Like a football player who misses the Superbowl because he wants to hit the practice field that day.

If Satan can turn your anxiety into mental distraction, he can pretty much incapacitate your mind. He can neutralize your greatest defense. He just takes your mind out of the picture by jumbling it up with distraction.

Foolishness

And then you start making dumb decisions. Anxiety makes you put too much weight on the one thing and not enough on other things, and so you make foolish decisions.

Heart

That’s what it will do to your mind; what about the heart? What kind of damage will anxiety do there?

Attitudes

Well, in Martha’s case it really did a number on her attitude, didn’t it? And again – her bad attitude turned what should have been the greatest moment of her entire life into something that was a big bummer. That’s the power of a bad attitude – it can take the greatest vacation, the best family get-together, the greatest blessings from God, the most wonderful things in life and ruin it for everyone. A bad attitude can turn the grand privilege of being able to serve the King of kings into a drudgery and a burden.

Anger

And not just attitude problems, but also anger problems. The more stressed out you get, the more easily you’re angered. It sounds like Martha was irritated at both Mary and Jesus. When you get like that, you’re mad at everyone who’s not helping you, which is the whole world. Anxiety tends to make you selfish, and selfishness makes you susceptible to anger.

Peace

That’s just a sampling of the kind of damage anxiety can do in your heart and mind – I’m sure we could identify many others. But if you pray the way Paul teaches us to pray here, your mind will be guarded from distraction and foolishness and your heart will be protected from bad attitudes, anger, and all the other sins that come from an anxious heart. You’ll have the very peace of God. God cares a lot about important things, and he is emotional about them, but he isn’t flustered. He has perfect peace in his heart, and when you pray this way, you’ll have that same peace. Praying the way Paul describes in this passage reminds you of who God is and what he is like, it puts your worries in perspective, it reorients your attention, and it corrects misaligned priorities. And so in place of that knot in your stomach, you’ll have peace. Instead of having turmoil and thoughts spinning out of control in your head, you’ll be calm on the inside have control over your thoughts. The tense muscles in your back and neck will relax. Instead of chaos on the inside, there will be the very same kind of calm that God has in his own heart.