“…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”[1]
Anxiety in
the Christian is a symptom. The sickness underneath it is always a dependence
on the sark, or the flesh. Anxiety tells everyone that we are relying on ourselves
and cannot see how to handle a situation that is too big for us.
The cure to
anxiety is to replace it with the mind of faith that brings everything to God
in prayer, petitioning God for what we need, expressing thanksgiving to him for
both his watch-care over us and his provision of what we need in Jesus Christ, and
laying all our requests before God in humble dependence.
If this
sounds too big for you, that is because it is. This is not a description of the
individual Christian taking care only of himself or herself. In that case, each
of us are stuck in whatever condition we are in. The weak are divided from the
strong, struggling with their powerlessness against anxious thoughts and
feelings and always trying to keep up.
This
Scripture is speaking to the church as a corporate entity, as the body of
Christ. It tells the church to be a home where anxiety is never nurtured and
accommodated. If the church leaders live by the mindset that there is no room
to handle life with anxiety because there is such a better way, they can then
help everyone, no matter how anxious, to come together even in full-on panic
attacks, and handle it by the way God has provided.
God’s way is
to bring the church together in prayer. He calls the leaders to lead the church
in presenting its petitions to God in prayer. The leaders surround the most
anxious members of the church with thanksgiving for the gospel, and the grace
of God that has adopted them as God’s sons, and made them brothers to the Lord Jesus
Christ. The leaders promote such thankfulness for things the anxious-hearted
among them cannot remember in their troubled state. The result is that, at a
time when some among the congregation could not entertain one thought for which
to be thankful, everyone’s hearts are lifted up together by the corporate
thankfulness of the church.
As an
anxiety-ridden believer joins with the church to pray, there will be those in
the congregation who know what to request of God on their behalf. When the
anxious brother or sister can only present what is wrong with them, the
faith-hearted church takes that starting place, that narrow description of
perceptions, and translates it all into prayers of faith that rise up to the
Father who is bigger than the problems encountered.
I present
this to lift up those fellow believers who feel so overwhelmed with anxiety
that Paul’s teaching on prayer seems absolutely impossible. If you cannot stop
being anxious, and cannot put your anxiety into the kind of prayer Paul
teaches, go find members of the body of Christ who will pray for you and with
you. Do this together, and everyone can be built-up.
I also
present this for those who are able to work out this kind of praying with fear
and trembling because you know that God is working this into you and the church
to both will and to practice this kind of praying.[2]
I encourage any brothers and sisters of faith to ask God to show you who you
could build up in faith and prayer by hearing what they are feeling anxious
about, and leading them in this kind of prayer.
The point is
that, when we all get together as the body of Christ, we all get to share in
the obedient faith that joins God in such a work of prayer so that everyone can
feel part of the same work of God in us and among us. We can weep with those
who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice[3]
with the kind of prayer that unites everyone together even though some must
intercede for others who cannot think of one thing to pray. When it is all done
together, everyone is included, everyone is blessed, every heart receives
ministry, every person knows the blessing of God.
On the day of
writing this, I am looking forward to our church’s prayer meeting later this
evening. I will spend the day asking God where I need the church’s prayers to
strengthen me, and preparing my heart to pray about the anxieties, and worries,
and hurts, and fears, and traumas, and disappointments, that anyone might bring
into our fellowship. I will be ready to pray, entreating God with supplications
that pour out every need to our heavenly Father in prayer. I will find things
for which to be thankful, reminding ourselves of the mercies of God that are
new every morning.[4]
And I will present every imaginable request to cover every expressed anxiety,
knowing that God is able to do far more abundantly than anything we could ask
or think.[5]
And, I know
that God will do something to fulfill his promise that, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”[6]I
expect to see this result tonight as God’s gift to us as we work out the kind
of anxiety-liberating prayer that he is working in us to will and to work for
his good pleasure.
In other
words, our heavenly Father would love to fill us with his peace, and has taught
us how to come to him so he can do so. Let us come. Together.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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