“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Our world is awash in anxiety. It’s popular in many places to have a therapist or counselor these days which is a good thing, but the very fact that so many feel like they need that help is an indication of the problem. The truth is that many more people could use it than actually get it. Yet while there is undoubtedly anxiety that is genuinely clinical, a great deal more of it is more situational in nature. It is the result of not having the worldview resources to deal with the challenges life throws our way from time to time. Christianity has such worldview resources, and one of the best of them is right here. Let’s take a look.

Consider this a bit of a preview of coming attractions. I did not plan this, but today serves as a nice set up for the sermon series I’ll start this coming Sunday called, When I Am Afraid. For the next three weeks we will be taking a look at some of what the Scriptures have to say about dealing with anxiety. This passage is not going to be one of the stops on that journey, although it certainly could have been. I’ve preached on it before at other times, so I opted to take things in a slightly different direction this round. Rather than getting into a full sermon-length treatment of what Paul says here, let’s just quickly break down the parts.

Paul starts with the command: Don’t worry about anything. That seems pretty broad which is because it is. There is not a single thing in our lives or in the world around us that is worth our worrying over. Our worry never makes any meaningful, positive difference in a given situation. We worry because of a perceived loss of control, but worrying doesn’t regain us that control. It never actually accomplishes anything except to make us miserable, and probably the people around us too who have to deal with us while we are worrying.

If worrying won’t accomplish anything, what’s Paul’s alternative? In short, prayer, but let’s look at how he frames this. Instead of worrying we are to present our requests to God. But the how matters here. We are to present our requests through prayer. But isn’t making a request of God prayer? That would have Paul telling us to pray…by praying…which doesn’t make much sense.

If we understand prayer as intentionally pursuing a relationship with God, though, things become clearer. We are to present requests to God in the context of a relationship with Him. If we just treat God like a vending machine who is there for our convenience when we need Him, He’s going to respond to that about as well as you would if someone treated you like that. But if we are constantly in pursuit of a relationship with God that we are nurturing and pouring into every day, the likelihood that He is going to be interested in what we are asking goes way up.

This is not to suggest that God needs to be buttered up somehow in order to get Him to do what we want. Rather, when we are in an active and healthy relationship with Him, we are far more likely to be asking for things He already wants to give us.

And when we have this relationship in place, we can make our petitions. This is not more repetition of the same idea. You petition someone who is ranked higher than you. In other words, we need to make sure we are approaching God like He’s God, and not like He’s something less than that. He’s God; we’re not. If we get that reversed and start treating Him like He works for us, we shouldn’t expect to get much from Him. The reason is not some vindictiveness on His part. Rather, if we are treating God like that, then we aren’t actually aiming our requests at God at all. But at someone or something else we happen to be calling by His name. Requests that aren’t actually going to God aren’t going to be answered by Him.

So, we need a relationship that is rooted in a proper understanding of who He is when we make our requests. But there’s one other thing we need as well. We are to do this “with thanksgiving.” Gratitude should define all of our interactions with Him. Everything that comes from Him is grace. He doesn’t owe us anything. He is in no way required or duty-bound to help us. We are creatures, He is the Creator. He doesn’t have to care about us. And yet He does. A lot. So much, in fact, that He was willing to sacrifice His life on our behalf so that we had the opportunity to be in a relationship with Him. Whenever we are interacting with Him, gratitude should be top of mind for us.

When we do all of this, the result will be peace. “And the peace of God…will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” The peace of God is the pervading sense of whole and rightness that comes from knowing He is on His throne and has all things—including our things—well in hand. When we turn toward our relationship with Him with gratitude, His peace will take the place of our worry. More specifically, Paul says it will guard our hearts and minds. That is, the one knowledge of what is true will override what’s not true. It will keep us from being taken by lies, namely, the lie that we are in control or that we could do something meaningful to improve the situation if we were. We aren’t and we couldn’t. But if we will trust Him and live out of His character, letting His power be the thing our love and obedience unleashes, that will have the kind of impact we are hoping for.

All of this happens, of course, only when we are in Christ. That is, this is only available to those who have put their trust in Him, who have accepted Him as their Lord and Savior. Apart from Christ, none of this is possible. We are stuck in our anxiety and fear and worry. There is no hope apart from Him. We have come up with all sorts of ways to try to mitigate the impact of this situation, and some are more effective than others. But all of them ultimately fall short of accomplishing our goal. That answer is only found in Jesus.

And if all of this seems like it doesn’t make a lot of sense, or is too good to be true, Paul understands. This peace of God that will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus “surpasses all understanding.” It’s not going to make sense from the outside looking in. And why would it? Apart from the lens of faith, the idea that we are going to find peace in the midst of our turmoil by talking to some invisible guy in the sky seems ludicrous. At least it does until we try it and it works. And by “it,” I don’t mean “talking to some invisible guy in the sky.” I mean we do what Paul tells us here: We accept Jesus for who He is, pursue a relationship with Him that is rooted in obedience and gratitude, and turn to Him in our worry instead of relying on ourselves. If we do that, God’s peace will come. If we don’t, it won’t. The choice is yours.