For Nothing, But In Everything

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;
(Philippians 4:6 – NKJV)

We have concerns, objectives, wants and needs, but what we are commanded not to have is worries. The proper subject of prayer is everything, no area of our life is exempt, God wants us to bring it all to Him. Prayer is an important way to overcoming obstacles, in that God answers prayer, and through it He also reveals what the obstacles are, we see the problems within ourselves that we can handle and we gain perspective on those things we have no control of, and we ask God to control them or to give us wisdom in how to deal with them. If you will request, He will reveal (A-S-K – Matthew 7:7-8).

Prayer is a broader word that can mean all of our communication with God, but supplication directly asks God to do something. Pray for peace and agreement in the fellowship, even when it is going good.

With thanksgiving – thank Him for what you have before you ask Him for what you need. The first thing they thanked God for in the Old Testament prayers was proclaiming God’s majesty and His mighty acts of redemption, and specifically the deliverance from Egypt and the bondage of slavery (2 Samuel 7:22-23 / Nehemiah 1:5-10). Now we thank God for His greatest act of redemption, and proclaim the work of Jesus Christ and our deliverance from the bondage of sin.

Thank Him that He started it and He will finish it, that He is working in us to do and to will and that He gives us strength to endure all things that we may be going through right now and in the future. We are going to make it, guaranteed, and we need to always come back to this as our bottom line as to why we can give thanks at all and accept whatever God may have for us to do or for us to go through.

Tell God what you have done wrong before you ask Him to make it right. In this particular passage the situation Paul was describing with the two ladies is like many situations we might face. We need to acknowledge the fact that we have split opinions and that we are not fully mature yet and that we need help to come together. We understand that we are together but we need the Lord to bring us to unity in verity. We have done wrong, not necessarily with willful malice, but the fact that we don’t see eye-to-eye means we are wounded in some way and we need God to heal us. We give thanks knowing that He can and He will if we will act in accordance with the bottom line.

As an individual, understand that God already knows what you have done wrong, but He wants you to live in constant view of the fact that He does know all that is going on about you, more than we know about ourselves. Realizing that we are open to God (Hebrews 4:13) helps us to live a more holy life. The Lord is at hand, indeed.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©